The Bird's Eye
by JolieBlack
Summary: In the aftermath of Halloween 1981, Severus Snape rails against the twists of fate, struggles to find a new purpose in life, and learns that magic is not nearly as useful as he had always thought. - A canon-compliant piece of backstory. Gen.
1. Chapter 1

**THE BIRD'S EYE**

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_**Summary:**_

_In the aftermath of Halloween 1981, Severus Snape rails against the twists of fate, struggles to find a new purpose in life, and learns that magic is not nearly as useful as he had always thought.__  
_

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_**Author's Note:**_

_Rated T for some violence and mature themes. Trigger warning for contemplation of suicide._

_Regarding canon compliance, I go with the books._

_To my friends and followers in the BBC "Sherlock" fandom - thank you for your patience while I complete this detour into the magical world._

_As always, this story is already written except for some minor final editing, and will not be abandoned. Expect an update every couple of days._

_I treasure all feedback._

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_**Prologue - February 1979**_

* * *

**Kyra**

The call had come just before the start of the rehearsal. The porter of the Conservatoire had edged quietly through the maze of music stands to whisper to Kyra, who was in her accustomed place in the student orchestra and busy tuning, that she was wanted on the phone. She could tell from the unusually serious look on his face that the news was both urgent and grave.

Half an hour and some hasty excuses later, Kyra was waiting outside the Conservatoire with her cello case by her side when her aunt Theresa pulled up in her car. She got out and immediately put her arms around her niece.

"I'm so sorry, pet," she muttered into Kyra's cloud of dark hair, and Kyra had simply let herself be held, like Theresa had held her so many times since she had taken the place of the mother who barely ever had.

Kyra couldn't bring herself to feign more emotion than she truly felt at the news. It left her numb rather than anything. But she was genuinely grateful to her aunt for taking charge of the practical side of things. She told Theresa as much when they were back in the car together, the cello safely stowed on the back seat.

"I feel like I should be doing something," Kyra said when they had left the city behind, and Theresa had given her all the details she had, many of which Kyra would have preferred to unknow straight away.

"You can find me my gloves," Theresa suggested. "It's even colder than I thought."

"I don't mean that," Kyra elaborated while retrieving her aunt's gloves from her handbag. "I mean, I'm twenty-three, and it's _my_ mother, so I should - "

"Nonsense," said Theresa curtly. "I'm used to sorting out my brother's messes. One more won't make a difference."

"Well, you sorted _me_ out all right," Kyra conceded drily.

"You know, pet," Theresa said, taking her left hand off the steering wheel to pat Kyra's knee affectionately, "that's actually my greatest pride." The two women glanced at each other and both smiled.

"Have you told - " Kyra began when they had travelled for a while in silence.

"No, of course not." The warmth was gone from Theresa's voice. "How would I? I've no address and no phone number, and I assume neither have you."

"No... but I feel like we should try and find out."

"If you think so, by all means do." Theresa had her eyes firmly on the road, but Kyra could tell that if she wanted to pursue this, she was on her own. Her aunt had her lips set in that hard line that Kyra knew meant further argument was futile. In fact, Kyra suspected that people close to herself knew that expression equally well. Intransigence ran in the family, and so did impatience with the advocates of lost causes.

From her own bag, Kyra dug out a pencil and a pad of music paper, which was all she had on her to write on.

The familiar chimney, looming large out of the smog, was in view by the time she had finished her letter. As they passed under the railway viaduct into the town, she folded the paper up and, for lack of an envelope, wrote the name of the recipient on the outside.

It had been a surprisingly difficult task, not least because Kyra barely knew whom she was writing to.

* * *

Theresa had arranged for them to meet the funeral director at the house. When they pulled up in the narrow cobbled street, they saw a little man in a black suit and coat standing there by the front door, in conversation with two others. His attire was solemn, as the occasion required, but he was talking so animatedly to his two companions that he gave the impression of an unusually cheerful nature, given his profession.

They got out of the car, and for the first time in many years, Kyra breathed in the smell of the street, of smoke mingling with the sharp cold air. The touch of rotting vegetation from the banks of the nearby river would be much stronger in the summer, though – it was barely perceptible at this time of the year. Smells, Kyra noticed, had a curious way of evoking memories, and she shut them away quickly.

The funeral director saw the two women approach and smiled at them amiably. He was either a consummate actor, or he was indeed one of those unflappable people who managed to see good in everything. No mean feat, Kyra acknowledged. He must deal with a lot of ugliness, working this job in this town. A woman lying dead in her house for days on end was probably not the worst thing he had ever seen. Although, Kyra supposed, not every of those cases also featured a deranged husband, passed out in an alcoholic coma on the rubbish dump downstairs that had once been a living room, too far gone to call for help even for himself, let alone her, and discovered only when the neighbours began noticing the stench.

They shook hands. Kyra only mumbled her name, happy to let Theresa do the rest of the talking. Meanwhile, she glanced at the two other men, who had stayed politely in the background. One of them was as short as the funeral director, but not nearly as rotund – an elderly man, stooped and wizened. He was in a shabby trench coat that barely seemed to keep him warm, and carried an equally shabby briefcase. The other was thin and tall and much younger, thirty at best. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles and a fur cap with ear flaps that clashed strangely with both his navy-blue pea jacket and his presumably hand-knitted woollen scarf.

Kyra was sure that she had never seen either of them before, but the haphazard way they were dressed was disturbingly familiar, just like the smell that perpetually hung over this place, instantly recognisable even after years. Kyra felt a sensation rise inside her that she remembered only too well, too - a sense of foreboding and of heightened alertness, a hot tingling under her skin, her throat constricting.

_They can't know. Nobody can know. _The thought presented itself unbidden, but with the same urgency as it used to when Kyra had still been a child. Browbeaten into compliance by the terrifying tales of what happened to those who were too careless or too generous with the truth, the law of absolute secrecy had become second nature to her even though she had inwardly bristled at it every time. The secret was, after all, not even her own.

Deeply ingrained habit made her check with a nervous glance whether her aunt and the friendly funeral director were unduly intrigued by the strangers' unorthodox appearance. It hurt especially because Kyra had always hated lying to Theresa most, and it had been so many years now that she had last been obliged to.

The funeral director noticed her unease, but luckily misread it. "Oh, I'm very sorry," he interrupted himself, indicating the two strangers with his hand. "These gentlemen are from the shire council. They, er – they say they had to do an inspection of the house, to make sure… health and hygiene regulations, you understand..." He spread his hands apologetically. "But nothing more to worry about now, they tell me. All clear."

The two other men nodded earnestly. Theresa, unsuspecting, thanked them politely for their trouble. Kyra's eyes, however, went to the briefcase in the older stranger's hand. It wasn't very large, and it didn't bulge. Whatever telltale evidence they had been sent to secure upon this death of one of their own, there couldn't have been much left.

"We've taken care of everything, ma'am," the younger of the two assured Kyra in a mild voice, as if he had read her thoughts. He turned to his colleague. "Well, Perkins, that's our job done then, isn't it?" He doffed his fur cap to the two women, revealing flaming red but already thinning hair, and after a quick exchange of condolatory formalities, the two strangers started to walk away. Kyra quickly made up her mind, and hurried after them.

"Excuse me," she called, pulling the folded music paper from her pocket. They turned back to her in surprise. "I - sorry, I was just wondering whether you might be able to post this letter for me." She held it out to the older man. He took it, read the name on it, and immediately exchanged a pointed look with his colleague, eyebrows raised.

"You can do that, even without a proper address, can't you?" Kyra asked anxiously. Their hesitation didn't bode well, but this was her only chance.

"We'll be happy to post it for you, ma'am," the older man said at length, and pocketed the letter carefully.

Relieved, Kyra watched them walk off down the street together. She could have sworn that they disappeared even before they rounded the corner.

* * *

Four people came to the funeral of Eileen Snape, née Prince, whom Kyra was not surprised to see there: the vicar, who valiantly tried to disguise the fact that he had barely known the deceased; the man who had sat idly by as she died, neither knowing nor caring that it was happening; a nurse from the care home he had been taken to afterwards, pushing him along in his wheelchair; and Aunt Theresa, as solid and reliable at Kyra's side as she had always been since the day Kyra had run away from home to her place, aged eleven.

There were also four unexpected attendants there in the churchyard, three men and one woman, strangers all, wearing long cloaks that billowed in the cold wind like sails. They spoke to no one and kept a respectful distance, forming a loose circle around the tiny congregation by the graveside, silent and watchful.

But the one person that Kyra had truly hoped would be there was not.

* * *

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**_October 31st, 1981_**

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**Severus**

The Halloween feast in the Great Hall at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was in full swing. There was a good deal more noise and chatter, both among the students and at the teacher's table, than was usual at mealtimes these days. Food was plentiful, and Professor Flitwick and Hagrid the gamekeeper had outdone themselves with the decorations. There were the usual colourful streamers, silvery garlands of cobwebs and a cloud of real bats, but also some new eccentricities, the decidedly worst of which were the bands of common garden gnomes that sat inside huge carved pumpkins as if in little caves, chanting raucously.

Severus Snape, looking around the hall from his place at the staff table, knew better than to show open disapproval of what most of his colleagues considered good, harmless fun. But he keenly felt how pitiful it was to attempt to provide such superficial cheer at a time when few people had reason to feel cheery about anything at all. The wizarding world outside these walls was in uproar, and anyone who closed their eyes to that fact was, in Severus' opinion, either woefully ignorant or willfully ignorant. He couldn't have said which he found more despicable.

And yet - was it envy that he felt as he looked across to where the students of his own house sat at their long table, laughing and talking and eating to their heart's content, with not a care in the world? He had even welcomed some of the older ones there himself, not so many years ago, at their Sorting. Hadn't he urged them to eat and make themselves at home then, and been glad of that camaraderie and that sense of belonging? How quickly it had evaporated.

Some of all this must have shown on his face, because Amandine Yaxley, the current Slytherin Quidditch captain, caught his eye and immediately shushed the team mates around her, one of whom froze in the middle of the exuberant reenactment of some spectacular save that nearly knocked his neighbour off their bench. The volume of merriment at the Slytherin table diminished perceptibly after that.

Severus had no objections to Halloween as such. He never felt quite at ease in social gatherings, and preferred the more formalised kind that gave you a script to cling to. But he had to admit that the faculty had at least gone through the motions of welcoming him to their ranks, even though his appointment had initially raised many eyebrows. And then, of course, there were the bats. He really quite liked those, and had to give credit to the bumbling gamekeeper for persuading them to join the feast year after year. After all, both the noise and the glittering lights of the Great Hall were even more contrary to their natural preferences than they were to his.

"Amazing little things, aren't they?" Professor Kettleburn in the chair next to him remarked amiably. He had followed Severus' gaze into the black, fluttering multitude above their heads. "I sometimes think it's unfair that we don't classify them as magical creatures. They are, after all, the only vertebrates that are capable of true and sustained flight without feathers. I'd always thought that made them rather singular."

He held up a piece of fruit in his one remaining hand and waived it tantalisingly towards the ceiling. Severus was glad to be sitting next to Professor Kettleburn tonight. He had discovered early on in his tenure that talking shop was the best way to ride out occasions like this, and the Care of Magical Creatures teacher was generally happy to oblige. Severus wasn't in a hurry to confide to Kettleburn, however, that what _he_ admired most about bats was their uncanny ability to navigate even complete darkness without the slightest accident or hesitation. He somehow doubted that still qualified as shop.

"Ah, here we go!" Professor Kettleburn exclaimed happily as a small black shape descended towards the bait in his hand. "Get it for me, Severus, will you?"

The Freezing Charm hit the little creature a foot away from its goal, and it hung there immobilised, a rather reproachful look on its tiny sharp face. Kettleburn plucked it from the air and laid it on the table between them.

"The use of bat fur in potionmaking is a Muggle superstition though, isn't it?" he enquired, prodding the bat gently with a scarred finger.

"It is," Severus agreed, and leaned across to examine the small talons. "These, however - "

It happened without warning. His outstretched arm jerked so violently that he knocked over Kettleburn's goblet of elf-made wine. Tears shot into his eyes while the ruby-red liquid stained the white tablecloth. Pain was stabbing at the inside of his arm like a red-hot knife.

"Careful, there!" Kettleburn cried and reached for his own wand to clean up the spill, but Severus barely heard him. Well hidden under the fabric of his silver-grey and green robes, the mark on his left forearm had flared up as it never had since its inception. It was pulsing frantically, as if there was something alive under his skin that was struggling to burst free. He knew at once that it wasn't a usual summons. It wasn't even a particularly angry or urgent summons. But it was threatening to break his arm open – and then it was over as quickly as it had started.

Severus saw his fingers tremble in reaction. His arm tingled from wrist to elbow, and he heard his own laboured breathing as he tried to collect himself and make sense of what had just happened. He failed.

"Are you quite all right?" Professor Kettleburn asked in a worried tone, but Severus merely muttered an apology, pushed back his chair and got up from his seat.

When he approached the Headmaster's chair in the centre of the table, Albus Dumbledore had already turned towards him, an eyebrow raised in enquiry. It really was remarkable how little escaped that man's attention.

"Something's wrong," Severus murmured in as low a voice as he could. "But I can't tell what it is."

"Then please find out," Dumbledore replied simply. They exchanged a long look, both of them unwilling to make more words than absolutely necessary with such a large and uninitiated audience at hand.

"I'll start in the usual place."

"Yes, do."

* * *

He knew he would be the last to arrive at Borgin and Burkes in Knockturn Alley, having to leave the Hogwarts grounds before being able to Apparate, so he had expected the place to be packed. But all was curiously quiet when he stepped through the barrier of protective enchantments into the dark, deserted shop, and from there into the dingy back room. He knocked on the door that led into the private part of the sprawling property, and it opened instantly. The doughy round face of Burke junior that appeared in the doorway shone with sweat.

"And where have _you_ been?" he hissed as Severus removed his mask and stepped into the dimly lit hall of the Burkes' ancient family home.

There were only two other men present, huddled together at the foot of the magnificent carved wooden staircase that led up to a gallery that spanned the whole length of the large room. Avery was pale as parchment in the torchlight. Mulciber's face was in shadow.

"I came as fast as I could," Severus said curtly. They knew as well as any in the Dark Lord's inner circle that he alone had been granted the privilege of delay in appearing by his master's side when summoned. "Where are the others? Has anyone been able to join the Dark Lord in the usual way?"

It was, of course, the first thing he himself had attempted, once outside the winged boars' gate. It had, emphatically, not worked.

"We can't!" Burke exclaimed. "Everyone's been trying to Apparate to his side for a good ten minutes now! He'll blame it on us!" The plump young man looked close to wringing his hands in dismay and fear.

"We hoped you'd be able to explain it, Snape," Mulciber addressed himself coolly to his former classmate. "A little joke of Dumbledore's, maybe?"

He had that suspicious look on his face again, as he often had when they met these days. Severus knew that intellectually, Mulciber was no match and thus no threat, but he'd have to keep an eye on him all the same. There was such a thing as envy rising to toxic levels.

"Protean Charms don't come with an off-switch, as you should know," he replied tartly. "Nor with an expiry date."

"You talk like a Muggle, Half-Blood Prince," Mulciber sneered. Severus ignored the slight.

"But what does it mean then?" Avery spoke up for the first time. His voice was low, and it trembled. "What's gone wrong?" He looked beseechingly at his friends.

"Who saw the Dark Lord last, and where?" Severus asked.

"He was here earlier tonight," Burke explained. "Then he left in a hurry, but he didn't tell a soul where he was headed."

"Not you, at any rate," Mulciber snapped at Burke. "But the truth is, we're all in the dark. The Lestranges have gone to look for him, though where to start is anyone's guess. Lucius Malfoy's been and gone, too, all talk and no cider, as usual. He says he'll send word if the Dark Lord makes contact at Malfoy Manor."

"He'll punish us all for this!" Burke was overcome by a fresh wave of panic.

"Shut _up_, Burke," Mulciber barked. "We can't lose our heads. We – "

He broke off. There was a muffled sound from the front of the house, where the shop was located, and then the bell on the shop door started tinkling continuously, high-pitched and nerve-wracking.

Burke blanched. "The door!" he cried, his voice cracking. "Someone's got through!"

Even while he spoke, there was the sound of heavy footsteps approaching at a run. The four men in the hall exchanged a look, then pulled out their wands. The distant bell continued to tinkle its warning.

"Upstairs," Mulciber ordered. "To the roof - Disapparate – "

Avery didn't need telling twice. He was already halfway up the stairs when Mulciber directed his wand at the door that separated them from the intruders. But he took a split second too long to decide on the best spell to strengthen it.

With a blast that made the very walls of the building tremble, the door flew open to reveal a group of fierce-looking men and women, eyes flashing, wands at the ready. The man in front - squat, grizzle-haired and with a fair chunk of flesh missing from his nose - took in the faces of the four young Death Eaters with a single glance, and his lip curled in a sneer.

"Class reunion, is it?" Alastor Moody growled, and all hell broke loose.

The Aurors burst into the hall. Spells flew in both directions with such force that they could be heard bouncing off the stone walls as the Death Eaters rushed up the wooden staircase, Avery in the lead, Burke puffing along last, hampered by his bulk.

Severus dodged one Stunning Spell and deflected another as he staggered backwards up the uneven steps, his sense of self-preservation warring with the necessity to hold back, to neither kill nor maim for life. He and Albus Dumbledore had a deal, but there had never been a detailed plan for every contingency, and he knew it was up to him to extricate himself from the situation as best he could.

Chips of masonry flew around his ears as he took aim at a dark-haired woman. The next moment, he was nearly brought down by the weight of Burke, who had stumbled into him, screaming in fear and alarm.

A strong draught of wind whooshed past them to the upper floor, where Avery must have succeeded in opening the door that led towards the roof and to safety, and Severus saw what Burke was trying to get away from. Mulciber, a few steps above them, had swung his wand in a wide circle and set the lower portion of the wooden staircase on fire. It lit up like tinder, blocking the Aurors' pursuit. They, too, yelled in alarm as a flaming many-headed dragon attacked them, its fiery mouths roaring like furnaces. But with the open door upstairs acting as a chimney, the fire spread even more quickly upwards than it did downwards. In no time at all, smoke engulfed the combatants and their outlines were barely visible to one another.

Severus heard Burke cough and retch somewhere close to him, but he couldn't catch a hold of him, and now the heat became stifling, and huge flames were licking at the hem of his own robes. He turned and ran up the remaining steps, the acrid smoke burning his lungs. He could hear Mulciber somewhere ahead of him as they both raced across the gallery, ducking low behind the bannister while random jets of light flew above their heads, eerily lighting up the fumes. Confused shouts rang in his ears as Moody yelled orders to the other Aurors, who were struggling to stop the fleeing Death Eaters and contain the Fiendfyre at the same time.

The door to safety couldn't be far now – and then it banged shut right in front of him, so close that he ran into it, his hands scrabbling for a hold on the polished wood. He wasted no more than a moment trying to open it. Mulciber had barred it from the other side, magically as well as mechanically.

"Severus Snape!" Alastor Moody's voice thundered through the din. "Come down! It's over!"

Severus looked around wildly for another way out, but there was none. He was stuck between the locked door and the raging, still expanding inferno of the staircase. The smoke, much denser up here, would make short work of him within the next minute or two if he let it. He made up his mind in a moment. Gripping his wand tightly in his hand, he vaulted over the bannister and dropped into the empty space below.

He might have got down relatively unharmed if it hadn't been for the spell from one of the Auror's wands that hit him in mid-air. It missed his body, but it caught in his fluttering robes, still forceful enough to spin him around. Thrown off balance, Severus landed in a heap on the stone flags, momentarily dazed by the impact. His fingers opened, and his wand clattered out of his hand.

"Get him, Frank!" a woman shouted.

A shadow loomed above him. Without thinking, he lunged after his lost wand.

"Bad idea, son," growled another man's voice, and a heavy boot stomped down on his groping hand, squashing it mercilessly against the floor. Something cracked, like brittle twigs snapping in two. Someone screamed. And then there was another wand against his back, his body jerked like a puppet from the force of the close-range Stunning Spell, and everything went black.

* * *

Consciousness returned gradually. Severus spent a long time drifting in and out of it. Curiously, the first of his senses to come back was that of smell. It reported filth, rot and decay, overlaid with an unexpected distant note of algae and salt water.

Pain was next, a dull throbbing in what he assumed was his left hand. He tried to move his fingers to verify this. Dull throbbing exploded into a sharp, acute ache. He let out a gasp, and icy cold air filled his lungs. It quickly flooded his whole body from heavy head to numb feet, and it made him shake as he lay there, the thin straw pallet and scratchy blanket doing little to keep it out.

It spoke volumes. He didn't even have to open his eyes to know where he was.

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TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**Albus**

* * *

The Wizengamot subcommittee had assembled in one of the smaller meeting rooms at the Ministry of Magic. Nevertheless, Barty Crouch had taken great care to make it clear from the beginning that this was not going to be a pleasant chat among old friends, but a serious affair with an as yet undetermined outcome.

From the timing of the session – five full days after Albus had last requested the case to be prioritised over any others – to the seating arrangements – a long table with Albus on one side and Crouch and his two associates lined up on the other, as if this was a small version of a real court room – it was a demonstration of Ministerial power. The committee members had even put on their plum-coloured robes of office. Albus would have been irritated if it hadn't been for the slight ludicrousness of it all.

Alastor Moody from the Auror office had been invited to attend, too, but he had merely lowered himself onto a bench along the wall, stretched out his wooden leg with a groan, and settled down to watch and listen.

In the centre of the table, next to a stack of files and some leather-bound law books, an eagle quill had recorded, at a wave of Crouch's hand, the time, the place and the names of the participants on a piece of parchment. Now, however, it lay quite still. At least Crouch had not opposed Albus' request to keep the actual content of his testimony confidential.

Albus had argued his case for nearly half an hour, taking his audience as far into the inner workings of the Order of the Phoenix and their fight against Voldemort as he thought advisable. He knew that a lot of what he was saying was news to the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and that none of it hadn't gone down well. The Ministry had not cut a very impressive figure in the fight against the Dark forces that had been slowly taking over the world it was supposed to protect. And although Barty Crouch himself could be accused neither of closing his eyes to that danger nor of exercising inappropriate leniency towards those who embodied it, he was clearly offended by the suggestion of any shortcomings on the Ministry's part.

Amelia Bones, whom Albus considered the sharpest mind currently assigned to Crouch's department, and Wizengamot elder Griselda Marchbanks, who had held this position since before the days of Grindelwald and was thus unlikely to be shocked by anything any more, were luckily both less likely to let Ministerial pride stand in the way of reason. In fact, Albus could tell that he had already won over Griselda halfway through. She had always had a soft spot for students whom she remembered to have done well in the exams she had conducted. In this case, it worked in favour of both the accused and his defender. Amelia Bones was harder to read. Crouch, on the other hand, was visibly having trouble accepting that the Order of the Phoenix had had someone acting as their eyes and ears within Voldemort's inner circle without the Ministry even knowing about it.

"I hope you realise that you're asking a lot, Albus," said Crouch when Albus had finally concluded his statement and made his request. Crouch opened a folder, retrieved a wand from it that Albus recognised at once, and held it up. "This is hardly the wand of an innocent man. I shall refrain from citing the full _Priori Incantatem _record that has been compiled from it, but people have been given life in Azkaban for less. There is a reason why some of these curses are called Unforgivable."

"They're no longer unforgivable when performed with Ministry approval, Bartemius," Albus objected calmly. They were getting to the heart of the matter at last.

"That is different," Crouch argued at once. "The law states that there may be extraordinary circumstances that justify their use."

"So you would agree that we cannot condemn anyone for using them, without first considering whether there _are_ any such extenuating circumstances?"

Crouch didn't respond. He couldn't contest this, of course, as the logic was flawless; but he couldn't quite bring himself to make any concessions yet either.

"The use of an Unforgivable Curse is justified against persons who pose a serious and imminent threat to the security of the Wizarding Community or individual members thereof," Amelia Bones provided the official wording, reading from a large tome in front of her. She glanced across at Crouch. "Subject to the availability of less restrictive means, of course."

Albus inclined his head towards her. "Thank you, Amelia. So may we not infer from this that a man who has greatly contributed to the security of the Wizarding Community and many individual members thereof for over a year has merited our gratitude rather than reprobation?"

"Right," Alastor Moody grumbled unhelpfully from the sidelines. "Order of Merlin, First Class, why don't we?"

Amelia Bones was chewing her lip thoughtfully.

Barty Crouch sat up even straighter in his chair. "The defendant was apprehended at a known rallying point of the Death Eaters -"

"The location of which he revealed, through me, to the Auror office months ago," Albus confirmed, "along with detailed information how to break through the enchantments protecting it against intrusion."

"There is no record of that."

"Of course there isn't. But who do you think could have provided that intelligence to me, if not someone deep in Voldemort's confidence?"

"So you don't deny that he _is_ a Death Eater, Albus?"

"Fat chance, with that ugly blot on his arm," muttered Moody.

"I'd prefer to say that he _was_ a Death Eater."

"You insist he was secretly working for you and the Order of the Phoenix," Crouch continued, his voice rising, "and yet he was repeatedly spotted skulking around the Potters' house in Godric's Hollow - who were known opponents of He Who Must Not Be Named!"

"And he subsequently provided false information regarding their habits and routines to Lord Voldemort, which crucially helped to keep them safe."

"For a while," Amelia Bones reminded him sadly.

"For a while," Albus conceded. "But do you not agree, Amelia, that in times like these, every day and even every hour counts?"

There was an audible sniff from Griselda Marchbanks. It was time to end this. Crouch was not going to be persuaded – he would have to be outvoted. It was the less preferable outcome, but it would do.

Albus rose from his chair. "If it's hard evidence of Severus Snape's true allegiance that you require, Bartemius," he said, drawing himself up to his full considerable height, "then we might as well stop wasting each other's time. As I've told you frankly, there is none. All I can offer you is my word. You have trusted my judgment in the past, so I can only hope that you will also trust me when we consider where to go from here. I personally vouch for the young man's good behaviour in the future. I guarantee you that he no longer poses a threat to anyone on our side. I give you my word that the Ministry will have no reason to complain of him ever again. If he disappoints you, chalk it up against me."

"That's a very big claim to make, Albus."

"I'm glad you see that," Albus replied simply.

Crouch sighed and looked around at his fellow committee members. Amelia Bones picked up the recording quill that had lain idle until now, and set its tip to the parchment.

"My vote," she said, "is in favour of clearing the defendant of all charges relating to his involvement with the Death Eaters, on the grounds of his laudable efforts to undermine their activities over the past year."

The quill obediently danced across the paper.

"So is mine," Griselda Marchbanks agreed at once, visibly relieved. The quill duly took note of this, too.

"On your head be it, then," Crouch grudgingly agreed. "Charges dismissed."

While the quill scribbled on, Albus exchanged a look with Alastor Moody, who was scowling.

"Let's just hope you're right," the Auror grumbled.

"I usually am, Alastor," said Albus mildly.

"Very well." Crouch pulled a form from the stack of documents in front of him and started filling it out. "Bring him in, then, Moody, and let's get this over with."

Albus had looked forward somewhat apprehensively to this moment. Detention in Azkaban, no matter how short, improved nobody's spirits nor appearance, and he had been fully prepared for the grimy, singed robes that hung loosely on an underfed body, for the matted hair, the deathly pale face and the dull black eyes that anxiously searched for his. They gave him a pang of guilt nonetheless.

"Severus Snape," the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement intoned in an official voice, "you have been brought here from Azkaban to answer to the charges laid against you pertaining to your involvement with the so-called Death Eaters. However, this committee has come to the conclusion that in recognition of your contribution to the downfall of He Who Must Not Be Named, as per testimony of Albus Dumbledore, these charges will be dropped unconditionally. Is there anything you wish to say?"

In an ideal world, the fitting response would have been "No, sir, thank you, sir," and Albus could tell that Crouch was disappointed not to get it. But Crouch's legalese had obviously gone right over Severus' head, and he was still stuck on the only word that had got through to him. Albus could see his lips repeat it in soundless disbelief. _Downfall. _

Another quick look at Alastor Moody confirmed what Albus had hoped for – this really was news to the young man.

"Well, just sign this then," Crouch instructed, pushing the form, the quill and an inkwell across the table.

Severus didn't move. Amelia Bones frowned.

"Just there at the bottom," Crouch indicated impatiently.

Severus did step up to the table then and reached for the quill. The sight made everyone in the room stare. The hand that had come out of the tattered sleeve to grasp the quill - the left - hardly deserved that name any more. It was swollen, discoloured and misshapen, more like a claw than a hand. The index finger seemed to have acquired an extra joint, while the fourth finger bent outward over the fifth at an odd angle. Both Albus and the committee members watched in helpless astonishment while Severus tried to put his name on his release papers, the damaged limb trembling so badly that he nearly upended the inkwell. It did not work. The signature that did finally end up on the paper was an illegible scrawl produced by an unpractised right hand, and an audible sigh of relief went around the room when it was done.

"Right," said Crouch in a noticeably less firm voice than before. He picked up Severus' wand and handed it back to him without looking him in the eyes. "That'll be all. You're free to go. This session is concluded."

* * *

Albus caught up with his charge halfway down the empty corridor outside. Severus had walked out of the meeting room like a man in a daze, looking neither left nor right, and Albus had hastily made his farewells to the Wizengamot members and hurried after him. He couldn't congratulate himself. Nothing that he had set in motion recently was turning out as expected. There had been prices to pay that he had never bargained for, and the list of failures he might never be able to make full amends for still seemed to be getting longer. It was imperative that he got this right at least.

Severus turned his head when Albus drew level with him. "Is it true?" he demanded. His voice was hoarse from disuse. "The Dark Lord -"

"He's gone," Albus replied.

"Dead?"

"That's debatable."

"The Dark Mark -"

"- didn't lie. He has ceased to exist in his accustomed form, that much is certain."

As Albus had expected, a sceptical crease appeared between Severus' eyebrows. "How can you be sure?"

"What do you say to discussing that question in more hospitable surroundings?"

Severus snorted. "I'll be dead the moment I step outside this building. I'd prefer to hear the full story while I still can."

"Who do you think wants to kill you?"

"Burke? Avery? Mulciber?" Severus suggested angrily. "Alastor Moody shouted my name all over the place back in Knockturn Alley. They'll know what I did."

"Burke is dead," Albus pointed out calmly. "As you know, Fiendfyre doesn't distinguish between friend and foe."

There was a silence. "And what about Avery and Mulciber?" Severus asked at length, and in a quieter tone.

"Are you sure they saw and heard enough to understand your role in this before they got away?"

Severus frowned again. "_Did_ they get away?"

"Yes. You were the only one taken alive. Which, by the way, explains the Ministry's reluctance to let you go. But the Death Eaters have scattered, Severus. Some have already been caught or killed in other raids, some are in hiding, some are busy talking their way back into the Ministry's good books..."

"Like you did for me just now?"

"I promised you that I would, should the need ever arise."

Not that either of them had ever really expected Severus to live to see that day. Of course, now it was here, he barely knew what to do with it.

"Well, if I may make a suggestion," Albus continued in a deliberately light tone, "I'd say a change of clothes is in order, and a decent meal, and someone to look at that hand of yours. Hogwarts is empty," he added when he saw the sceptical expression on Severus' face deepen. "We sent all the students home for a special holiday, once the rumours were confirmed. We thought they deserved some time to celebrate with their families. We'll have the place to ourselves. Can you Apparate, do you think?"

"Of course I can Apparate," Severus muttered stubbornly, and Albus was relieved to see that he was already busy putting his defences back up. He would sorely need them.

* * *

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

**Severus**

* * *

Severus was reeling. The floor of the Headmaster's office heaved under his feet like the deck of a ship in a stormy sea, and the roaring in his ears was as loud as the crash of waves on rocks. He might have been drowning. He _was_ drowning. Doubled over, he tried to draw in big gasps of air, but none of them made it past the constriction in his throat. A groan broke out of him, a raw and desperate sound, but it didn't bring him back to the surface, and it brought no relief at all.

He could sense Albus Dumbledore standing over him, even though the Headmaster had now ceased speaking. A hand touched him on the shoulder and guided him to a nearby chair. He felt for it blindly with his bad hand, and a fresh stab of pain shot up his arm at the contact. It was as if every fibre of it was pulsing in response to the catastrophic news. _Dead - dead - dead._

The need to blame, to accuse, to find fault with anyone apart from himself was overwhelming. He raised his eyes to meet Dumbledore's.

"I thought … you were going … to keep her … safe …" He ground out every word with a tremendous effort.

"She and James put their faith in the wrong person," said Dumbledore dispassionately. "Rather like you, Severus. Weren't you hoping that Lord Voldemort would spare her?"

Images were rushing through his mind, as if he had witnessed the scene himself: The little half-timbered cottage, its front door blasted off its hinges, a dead body in the hall, carelessly stepped over on the way to the nursery upstairs, the child in his cot, neither knowing nor understanding that the sky had just come crashing down, that the world had just stopped turning on its axis, because there she lay on the floor, her beautiful green eyes staring into nothingness, cold and still, her life ripped away from her, gone forever -

His stomach turned over. He gritted his teeth and fought down the reflex, but only just.

"Her boy survives," Dumbledore continued. His voice seemed to come from very far away. Severus jerked his head as if to flick off an irksome fly. What relevance did that damned boy have?

"Her son lives," the Headmaster repeated. "He has her eyes, precisely her eyes. You remember the shape and colour of Lily Evans's eyes, I am sure?"

The unspeakable pain inside him bubbled up to the surface again, like a potion on a badly tempered fire, and this time it took the form of rage.

"DON'T!" it burst out of him so loudly that it made the silver instruments on their spindle-legged tables rattle. "Gone … Dead …" He hated his incoherence, but his ability to form complete sentences seemed to have flown out of the window, straight after the cherished illusion that anything he did in life made any difference to anything that happened on this planet, ever.

"Is this remorse, Severus?" Dumbledore enquired, his voice hatefully calm.

"I wish … I wish I were dead …" This, too, had come out without conscious thought, but it was the only logical conclusion, once one acknowledged the utter pointlessness of trying to struggle against the twists of fate. They had a way of turning on you and punching you right in the face if you were arrogant enough to believe that you had even a shred of control over them.

"And what use would that be to anyone?" replied Dumbledore coldly. "If you loved Lily Evans, if you truly loved her, then your way forward is clear."

The suggestion was laughable. A way forward? Where to? Wasn't this the end of time? Was the sun ever going to rise again?

"What – what do you mean?" he heard himself ask at length.

"You know how and why she died," Dumbledore replied. "Make sure it was not in vain. Help me protect Lily's son."

"He does not need protection," Severus spat. The very mention of the boy made him bristle again. "The Dark Lord has gone –"

"- the Dark Lord will return," Dumbledore objected immediately. "And Harry Potter will be in terrible danger when he does."

It still defied belief. Babies could not survive for more than a day or two without being looked after and cared for, even without Killing Curses directed at them. Much less did they have the power to defeat one of the most accomplished Dark wizards of all time. Why on earth had this one managed it?

_The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches,_ a hoarse, harsh voice echoed in his head. _Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies..._

Were the Fates laughing at him now because he, Severus Snape, who didn't even believe in prophecies, had been the unwitting originator of all this horror, in his blind eagerness to please the master who did?

It was ridiculous. Delusional. There was no such thing as predetermination. This whole chaotic world fumbled along only by chance.

But the truth was, those who held such beliefs were, as a rule, incurable and prone to recidivism. Logic dictated that if the Dark Lord had tried to kill the boy once, he would try again. And if he had needed to be stopped once, he'd need to be stopped again.

Yes, the Fates were laughing at him, but not for the reason he had thought. They were laughing because this _wasn't_ over.

At last, when Severus felt sure that he had regained control of himself and mastered his own breathing, he said, "Very well. Very well. But never -" He knew he was not in the position to make demands or impose conditions, but it was out before he could help himself. "Never tell, Dumbledore! This must be between us! Swear it! I cannot bear … especially Potter's son …" He was going incoherent again. "I want your word!" he demanded angrily.

"My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?" Dumbledore said with a sigh. "If you insist …"

It sounded like mockery in his ears. 'The best of you'? When he had as good as killed with his own hands the one person on earth who had deserved to walk on it forever? If this was really the best he could do, then what could he expect to happen on a less prosperous day?

"You're not convinced yet, are you?" Dumbledore observed calmly. He had walked away a few paces, to one of the moonlit windows, and was speaking with his back to the room, looking out into the night. "You've agreed, and I'll hold you to that, but your heart isn't in it."

Severus snorted. He wasn't sure there even was a heart inside his aching chest. All he could feel there was a knotty lump of flesh that should have no right to still be pumping blood, if hers no longer was.

"Well, what do _you_ suggest?" Dumbledore asked softly. His back was still turned, and Severus realised that this was an instance of the Headmaster's favourite brand of Legilimency - the kind that required no eye contact nor spells. It was infuriating, because Severus struggled to understand how exactly it worked, and thus had no defence against it.

"I suggest," he replied defiantly, "a Draught of Peace. With a very strong emphasis on the syrup of hellebore."

Dumbledore turned on his heel, his bright blue eyes narrowed.

"Try it," he said simply. "Try it now."

* * *

They took each other at their word. Down the spiral staircase they went, back out into to the quiet corridors of the school, down more stairs and across the entrance hall, their feet finding their way easily even in the dark. Severus walked a step or two ahead of the Headmaster this time, driven along by his grim purpose. He only halted when they reached the door of the Potions classroom.

Albus Dumbledore invited him inside with a gesture of his hand, and Severus swept past him. The door closed behind him with a soft snap, and he turned to find that he was alone.

Milky pale moonlight filtered in through the windows high up in the stone walls, faintly reflected in the glass doors of the ingredients cupboard. It outlined the students' worktables, the cauldrons stacked on their shelves, and the fountain with the gargoyle in the corner, all as prim and neat as he had left it on his last day of teaching, before he had locked up and gone to join the Halloween feast.

At first Severus just stood there, taking in the familiar room. Then he glanced across at the table that had been his for seven years. It stood in a quiet corner of the room, where he could sit with his back to the wall and the door in view, which was a necessary precaution when one had Potions together with the Gryffindors. He walked over to it and ran his good hand over the rough surface. The large burn stain that vaguely resembled the outline of a crocodile was still there – not his fault, it had been there already when he had first claimed this table for his own. But she had found it funny, and had sometimes pretended to feed rat tails into its gaping mouth when They had sat there together in their first year. It would be a good place to do what he was about to do. Much better anyway than the teacher's desk, where he had always felt like a usurper, in spite of Horace Slughorn's earnest and repeated protestations that he had been ready and indeed happy to retire.

He proceeded to the front of the class to fetch a cauldron, and from there to the ingredients cupboard. He half expected it to seal its doors against him, or at least to groan in protest when he unlatched them, but it did neither. The many jars and boxes stood there in silence, innocent and unaware of the purposes they could be made to serve.

He carefully selected the ingredients he would need, picking them out one by one with his unpractised right hand. The small glass jar with the moonstones toppled over when his sleeve brushed against it. He instinctively reached out with his left to straighten it, but he couldn't bring his crooked fingers to close around it. There was a moment of undignified fumbling, and then the jar hit the floor, bursting open. Severus cursed under his breath. Holding his wand in his right hand, too, he Summoned the scattered moonstones back into their container. Was it only the darkness in the room that made his aim a little unsteady, or did the spell really work a little slower than usual?

He needed more light. The torches along the walls thankfully didn't hesitate to flicker into service as he pointed the wand at them. He put the ingredients into the cauldron and carried everything back to the table at the back of the room.

Lighting a fire and placing the cauldron on it were such routine moves that his bad hand barely hampered him. But setting up the delicate brass scales with only one good hand posed another problem, and he had knocked them over twice before they were ready. He worked on doggedly, trying to ignore the trembling of his fingers as he measured threads of saffron into the cauldron with a small pair of tweezers. He spilled a good deal in the process, Vanished the evidence with a flick of his wand – a flick that, from the wrong hand, didn't come nearly as naturally as it used to – and forbade himself sternly to wonder when he had ever needed to clean up after himself before.

The next challenge were the passiflora roots that had to be cut into small pieces of exactly equal size. It was painfully slow going, and as his impatience mounted, his movements became less and less precise. It seemed as if the ingredients were putting up a struggle against him, and his tools had joined the conspiracy, too, determined to show him his inadequacy, resolved to make him fail.

He was so far behind in his preparations that he had had to temper the fire twice when the silver knife slipped and sliced straight into his finger. His hand twitched, and the remainder of the passiflora root skidded across the desk, hit a tiny phial that stood there and knocked it right over the edge. Before he could reach out to catch it, the milky syrup spattered the flagstones and immediately seeped away through the cracks, irretrievably gone.

There was no need to get up and check if there was a replacement in the ingredients cupboard. He had known that they were running low, and this had been the only phial of hellebore left.

Severus sat very still, the silver knife in his right hand, the cut on his left quietly dripping blood onto the tabletop. Then, with one sudden savage move, he drove the point of the knife into the wooden surface. It stuck there, still quivering, while he buried his face in his mismatched hands, hiding it from the world.

* * *

**Albus**

* * *

Returning from the dungeons, Albus Dumbledore made his solitary way back upstairs through the empty castle. He reached the great double doors to the hospital wing a few moments later and knocked.

Poppy Pomfrey, used to being called upon at every hour of the day or night to take care of emergencies, didn't seem surprised when she came to the door, pulling a cardigan over her nightshirt.

"I apologise for the lateness of the hour, Poppy," Albus greeted her quietly. "But you have a patient."

Madam Pomfrey looked over his shoulder and, seeing nobody else there, raised her eyebrows enquiringly.

"He may present himself of his own accord," Albus explained. "But if he hasn't done so by midnight, I'd be very much obliged to you if you would go and fetch him. You will find him in the Potions classroom."

* * *

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

**Albus**

Albus returned to the hospital wing after breakfast on the next morning and found Madam Pomfrey's patient on a bed at the far end of the ward. He sat on top of the covers, propped up on the pillows, a magazine or journal leaning against his knees.

The sight made Albus pause in the doorway. He found himself transported back in time. Maybe it was the plain black robes that the laundry elves had found for him, or maybe it was the look of intense concentration on the young man's face as he sat there absorbed in his reading, his black hair falling into his eyes. For a moment, Albus seemed to be looking at the student again, rather than at a grown man. But the illusion didn't last. Severus looked up sharply, sensing the presence of his visitor, and it was gone. The boy from back then had never been of an exactly cheerful disposition, but he hadn't known the kind of sorrow that was now edged into every line of the man's pale face.

The door to Poppy Pomfrey's office stood open. Albus could hear her move around inside as he walked past, close at hand in case she was needed, but out of sight for the time being. He deeply appreciated her discretion.

"Good morning," he said as he approached the bed. "I hope you slept."

"She made me." Severus' voice was low and hoarse, and the deep shadows under his eyes told Albus that Poppy Pomfrey had battled against long and sustained opposition before she got her way. He deeply appreciated her perseverance, too.

He used his wand to draw up a chair and sat down by the bedside. Severus closed his journal, but he didn't put it aside. Albus glanced at the cover. It was the latest issue of _The Practical Potioneer_, and he took it for a good sign. "I'm glad to see you haven't given up yet," he attempted a light tone. "So, what do you think of Damocles Belby's latest forays into –"

"How do you know I'm not just saying goodbye?"

The two men looked at each other in silence for a moment.

"You knew I couldn't do it, didn't you?" Severus demanded then.

Albus sighed. "I expected it, yes."

"Then why did you make me try?"

"I didn't _make_ you," Albus pointed out quite truthfully. "But I was hoping that the attempt would help you see -"

"- the way forward?" Severus snapped.

"A first step of the way, maybe."

As if on cue – in fact, right on cue – Madam Pomfrey emerged from her office and joined them by the bedside, her face grave.

"Ah, Poppy," Albus greeted her amiably. "I believe this is an excellent time to give us your professional opinion."

"He knows it already." The matron glanced at her patient as if asking for his permission to continue. The damaged hand that rested on the Potions journal twitched ever so slightly, as if its owner was fighting an urge to tuck it away under the bedclothes, out of sight. But he raised no objection.

"Well," Poppy sighed, "to put it bluntly, Headmaster – as it is now, that hand will never hold a wand again. Four, possibly five fractures… It would have been the work of a moment to put that right, of course, if it had been done straight away. But as these injuries have been left untended, though I still fail to understand how that can possibly have happened, the bones have knit all in a tumble. Eleven days is plenty of time for things to settle down irreversibly." She gave Albus a very reproachful look. "It's a right dog's dinner, Headmaster, if you'll excuse the expression. Please don't tell me this was inevitable."

Albus glanced at Severus and acknowledged that he owed the young man an answer to that question. He had one, of course, but he wasn't at all sure that it was good enough.

"I'd imagined that the damaged bones could simply be removed and then regrown," he suggested, although he thought he knew already what the response would be.

Poppy shook her head. "I'm afraid not. Skele-Gro will regrow bones in exactly the same shape they were in before their loss or removal, which would be pointless in this case. And besides, this isn't just about bones. Muscles and nerves and sinews all come into this, too. If they're out of tune with the skeletal structure, as they will be at this point, that alone can be debilitating. There _are_ some things that can't be set right with a wave of a wand," she concluded grimly. "The Muggles know that, by the way. We should take a leaf out of their book sometimes, when it comes to giving ourselves the time needed for true healing. There are plenty of instances where Muggles have eventually regained the use of their extremities through patient and systematic exercise, even though they appeared damaged beyond repair at first..."

"Break them again," Severus cut across her, surprising them both. "Then set them and fix them in the usual way. Shouldn't that solve the problem?"

The recklessness in his tone made Poppy Pomfrey bristle. "I take exception to the suggestion that I'm versed in curses that break bones!" she snapped at her patient, her nostrils flaring. "I'll have you know, _Professor_, that I don't tolerate the practice of Dark Arts in my hospital wing!"

"Well, can you do it, or can't you?"

They stared at each other angrily. Then Severus' lip curled. He looked oddly satisfied, and Albus knew that they had both correctly interpreted Madam Pomfrey's failure to answer that question in the negative.

"_Is_ this an option, Poppy?" Albus asked earnestly, although he couldn't have said whether he was hoping for a yes or a no.

The matron hesitated. "I'd have strong reservations," she said then, her voice rigidly professional again. "Things could easily turn out twice as bad instead of better. It would be difficult to be sufficiently accurate, for one. There'd certainly be quite some trial and error. Which, needless to say, not every patient would be ready to endure," she added with a sidelong glance at the person in question. He seemed unimpressed.

"Are there any precedents for this in the history of Healing?" Albus enquired. It was helpful to imagine that this was no more than an academic discussion among a group of experts.

"Well, I can't speak to some of the grislier practices that my predecessors may have resorted to, back in the days of the Goblin wars when casualties were aplenty and resources scarce. Those are poorly documented, as a rule, and that's probably for the best. But as for instances in modern day Healing, I know of none. If anyone were to try this, they'd certainly be entering the realm of experimentation."

"My favourite pastime," Severus muttered. "I'm in."

This earned him another stern look, and if it hadn't been for Madam Pomfrey's innate goodness of heart and dislike of all violence, Albus thought it might have been a box on the ear as well.

"Mind your words, young man," she snarled. "I remember your personal brand of creativity only too well. Forever lying to me about those nasty curses you'd been making up, and mixing your own weird concoctions and testing them all on yourself... I'm still waiting to find out what exactly had you coughing up blood for a whole week, back in your fourth year."

"A variant of Polyjuice Potion with double-stinged hornets instead of lacewing flies," Severus admitted without hesitation, "intended to prolong the transformation by slowing down the digestive process."

Poppy's eyebrows rose into her hair.

"It didn't work," he added grudgingly.

"Yes, I could tell that much."

There was a silence, heavy with hurt pride on both sides.

It wasn't the best of all possible motivations, but it would do. Albus got up quietly from his chair and left the pair of unlikely allies to themselves to plan and prepare for their grim task in private. By the time he reached the door, they were already discussing the finer details.

With a smile, but also with a slight pang of regret, Albus closed the door of the hospital wing behind him. A Ravenclaw and a Slytherin were about to give Godric Gryffindor a run for his money, but he didn't feel that he had the right to witness any of it.

* * *

The invitation had been for afternoon tea, but the weather was surprisingly mild and dry for November, so Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall relocated their appointment to the castle grounds. The sun was low on the horizon already at this time of the year, but it peeked bravely through a gap in the clouds now and then.

They ambled down to the Great Lake in silence and halted at the edge of the water.

"So you got him back then?" Minerva said at length, looking out across the blue-grey expanse before them. "How has he taken the news?"

"The news of Lord Voldemort's demise? With relief, of course, much like the rest of us."

"You know which news I meant." She hadn't been fooled for a moment, and Albus acknowledged that he should have expected no less from his deputy headmistress. She glanced at him, smiling wistfully. "I pride myself in my powers of observation, Albus, especially when it concerns a student of my own house. You betray nobody's confidence, I believe, when you agree with me that they did stand out. A very unlikely pair of friends, those two."

"Then we will assume that you've answered your own question," he replied in a carefully neutral voice. A promise was a promise.

"The Potters' death was beyond your control. He must see that."

"You know, I find that rather difficult to see myself."

"I know you don't like to think that anything is ever beyond your control," Minerva chided him. "But there you are. Life tells us otherwise."

Side by side, they set out on the grassy path along the shoreline.

"I should have got him out sooner, at least," Albus said eventually. "If I hadn't been so absorbed by -"

"- by a whole lot of other things that were equally urgent," Minerva interjected. "Harry Potter's safety was our first and foremost priority. And then there was -" She broke off, unwilling to say either name aloud. There was no need - the memory of the death of yet another member of the Order of the Phoenix, at the hands of his supposed friend and ally, was all too fresh on both their minds. Minerva cleared her throat. "Don't blame yourself for not taking care of everyone at once."

"You haven't seen his hand." Albus sighed. "That part I never meant to happen."

"Just 'that part'?" Minerva pursed her lips. "Are you telling me that you landed him in Azkaban on purpose?"

"Yes, of course." Albus heard her sharp intake of breath and hastened to forestall her protest. "It was the safest place for him to be, under the circumstances. There was no knowing how quickly the Death Eaters would disband, or how hungry for revenge they would be if they found out what he's been doing. What I hadn't counted on were the Ministry's plans to make an example of him, rather than -"

"- eat out of your hand?"

"- give him his due," he corrected her in a slightly injured tone. Minerva McGonagall had a way of making him second-guess himself like nobody else could. "At least they didn't start interrogating him before I got to make my statement. Alastor Moody saw to that for me."

Minerva digested the implications, and her frown deepened. "Does that mean Severus Snape sat kicking his heels in Azkaban for over a week with absolutely no clue what had happened at Godric's Hollow?"

"Luckily, yes."

_"Luckily?"_

"Minerva, please – what would the Dementors have made of it if he had known?"

A slight gust of wind rippled the surface of the lake. They walked on in silence.

"So what's the plan?" Minerva asked eventually, when the old beech tree that marked the end of the path came in sight. "I assume you've got one?"

"I do, although at the moment, it mainly consists of hoping that he'll be well enough to resume his post by the time our students get back after Christmas. With the aid of the incomparable Poppy Pomfrey, a great deal of patience and a pinch of luck, it could happen."

He had finally managed to genuinely shock his deputy, and he couldn't help smiling at her scandalised expression.

"You're not seriously considering -"

"- keeping him on? Why yes, of course I am. He needs a job, Hogwarts needs a Potions Master, and Slytherin needs a Head of house. Why look elsewhere?"

"I was under the impression that his appointment was a mere cover story," she said stiffly. "Not a vocation."

"He's one of the best Potioneers in the country."

"He's far too young to be a proper teacher. He's, what, twenty? Twenty-one?"

"Twenty-one, going on fifty. He's seen and done and dealt with things that few of us go through in a lifetime."

Minerva huffed indignantly. "Well, if that constitutes work experience in your eyes, then he's hopelessly overqualified. Seriously, Albus, a Death Eater in charge of school level Potions? That would be like - like -" She cast around for a sufficiently absurd comparison. "- like hiring Alastor Moody to teach Defence against the Dark Arts!"

Albus chuckled in genuine amusement. "Ah, Minerva, what an excellent idea! Remind me to mention it to Alastor one of these days. He might be interested, once he starts thinking of retirement."

But if he had hoped to elicit a smile in return, he was disappointed.

They reached the beech tree and turned around to look back towards the towers and turrets of the distant castle. The sun had sunk too low to reach them here, and it was getting too cold to linger.

"But this is all hypothetical at present," Albus continued, serious again, as they set out on their way back. "The primary objective must be to give him the use of his wand hand back. And I have someone quite apart from Poppy Pomfrey in mind who might be able to help him with that."

"And who would that be?"

"His sister."

Minerva stopped short and frowned. "I've never heard that Severus Snape had a sister. Are we talking about a Squib?"

"I'm not sure that's a helpful expression," Albus replied rather more sharply than he had meant to. "You know that I don't hold with defining people by their deficiencies."

She made an impatient gesture with her hand. "A Muggle, then?"

"Officially, yes. She did the best thing a non-magical child from a mixed family could do. She chose her side and never looked back."

"Where is she now?"

He smiled. "Busy creating her very own brand of magic."

"You speak in riddles."

"But Minerva," Albus protested, "are you telling me that a person with a taste in music as refined as yours is unaware of the existence of Kyra McAllister-Snape?"

* * *

TBC

* * *

_**A note on the term "Squib"** -_

_While the original HP books vaguely define a Squib as _"_a non-magical child from a magical family_"_, they_'_re unclear on whether non-magical children with mixed parentage would be considered Squibs or just Muggles. The books are also unclear on how common it is for mixed parents to have both magical and non-magical children. However, JK Rowling has since clarified in interviews and on Pottermore that it's extremely rare for children with mixed parentage not to be magical, and those children – including Kyra - are indeed considered Squibs. _


	6. Chapter 6

**Kyra**

The conversation at the dinner table in the McAllister household jumped wildly from one topic to the next. That wasn't unusual - both the man Kyra had married and his daughter were very social animals, and between them, they provided enough chatter for three.

Sarah took the lead, unshakably convinced as always that the agonies of a teenager's life took precedence over the concerns of her elders. She ranted at length about the rank unfairness of her English teacher and the low grade she had received on her latest essay. Then she moved on to the sleepover she had scheduled with some of her school friends, including a detailed analysis of who had been invited, disinvited and reinvited at what precise planning stage, and why. David only called a halt when she got on to the question of whether she couldn't please get one of the incredibly cute kittens from the litter of her best friend's tabby. Kyra was allergic to cats, and that was the end of it.

It was David's turn then, and he enthused for a while about the gifted young Brazilian tenor that the Opera Company had managed to engage for the season. By the time he had also had his say about some asinine new exam regulations introduced by the pencil pushers on the Conservatoire's board of administrators, the meal was almost over.

Kyra honestly didn't mind. She had none of her husband's gift of keeping a conversation going without effort, but she liked it very much in him. Listening to his and Sarah's talk grounded her, not in spite of but because of its harmless, everyday nature. On days like this, she could feel the warmth of their familiarity and their deep affection reflected onto her, and it lit up her life like not even her music did.

Sarah had skipped back upstairs and David and Kyra were doing the dishes when the conversation finally turned to Kyra's own day. She had spent the afternoon at the Town Hall, where the city's symphony orchestra had been putting the finishing touches to their upcoming concert.

"So how's the Elgar coming along?" asked David, who was drying the dishes and putting them away.

"Really well," said Kyra, her hands in warm, soapy water up to her elbows. "There's so much to be learned from watching an amazing performer up close."

They both knew and loved this particular piece, having got engaged on the same day that Kyra had played it at her graduation concert.

"I bet you could still play the whole thing from memory yourself," said David.

"Not as well. We both know I'm not world-class."

"You're Kyra-class, that's good enough for me. But you really need to get better at blowing your own trumpet, too."

"That's a strange thing to ask of a cellist, David."

They both laughed. David slid his arm around her waist, pulled her close and kissed her.

When they turned their attention back to the dishes, their conversation also returned to the famous soloist whose name was all over the posters advertising the concert.

"Is he as good as his reputation has it, then?" David asked.

"Oh, absolutely. He's out of our league. He's only coming to do Simon a personal favour."

Birmingham wasn't the hub of the musical universe, and it was obvious to everyone in the orchestra that the great man's only reason for performing in their concert was to give their newly appointed conductor a boost.

The conductor, Simon - he insisted on first names -, was ridiculously young for his prestigious position, painfully eager to prove his extraordinary talents to the world, and not above roping others into his service to that end. But he was also evidently in love with the work they did together. Even after the short time he had been their conductor, Kyra couldn't help trusting him that he was keeping them all on their toes for a higher purpose than his own self-aggrandisement.

"I wish I could be there," David said regretfully.

Kyra shrugged. It was a familiar refrain in their married life. Their busy schedules clashed much more often than they aligned. "There's always a next time," she said. "By the way, do you have anything planned for -"

"Oh! There it is!"

Kyra looked up in surprise at her husband's sudden exclamation. He stood by the back door, the damp tea towel dangling from his hand, peering out through the glass into the garden.

"What is it?" she asked quickly.

"Sarah was right!" David told her delightedly, pointing at the trees at the far end of their small patch of greenery. "She said she'd seen an owl earlier this afternoon. I thought she must have imagined it, in the daytime and all, but I just saw it, too!"

Kyra hastily dried off her soapy hands and joined her husband. Her skin had started prickling uncomfortably, and she was sure it wasn't from the dishwater. "Where? I don't see it." Her voice sounded high-pitched and strained in her own ears. Would she manage to pass her alarm off as innocent excitement?

"There, on the branch of the tree! It's really hard to make out in the dusk, but I saw it glide across the lawn and land there, only a moment ago. Looked like it had something in its talons, too."

Kyra's misgivings increased exponentially. "Did you see what? A mouse?"

"No, bigger than that, and square in shape. Strange, really -"

He reached out for the door handle. Kyra immediately put a hand on his arm. "No, don't startle it. It could just be a piece of old newspaper, or something. Maybe owls go scavenging in dustbins, like foxes."

David shrugged but stayed put. They stood looking out of the window for a minute or two in silence, but the dark shadow among the leafless branches did not move again. Kyra's heart was still pounding so hard that she feared David must hear it, but he seemed oblivious.

"Well, that's nice," he said finally, and to Kyra's infinite relief he turned away to replace the towel on its hook. "I've never seen an owl in the garden in all the years I've lived here. Have you?"

"No, I can't say that I have," Kyra replied truthfully, and forced a smile.

* * *

There was really nothing left to do, but Kyra busied herself tidying up the kitchen for another ten minutes. David, unsuspecting, excused himself and withdrew to his piano in the sitting room. He had another batch of coaching sessions at the opera to prepare for, and Kyra waited until she could hear him deeply immersed in the accompaniment of an aria from _La Forza del Destino. _Then she carefully, soundlessly, eased the back door open.

The owl came to her as soon as she stepped outside. It glided silently towards her through the night and landed on the railing by the steps leading down onto the lawn. It was a large and beautiful bird, with smooth feathers and haughty eyes the colour of honey. Kyra almost felt compelled to apologise to it for suggesting that it ever pecked at rubbish.

It stuck out one leg to her. There was a small envelope tied to it. Kyra untied it with trembling fingers. It had her name on it. The unusually thick paper crackled ominously as Kyra slipped it into her pocket.

The owl seemed to be waiting for something.

"Erm - thank you," Kyra whispered awkwardly. "I'll read it later."

With a gentle rustling of its feathers, the owl took off. Kyra watched it long enough to see it settle in its chosen tree again. Then she quickly headed back inside and upstairs to the privacy of their bedroom. She went with a heavy heart. It may have been good manners to thank the owl for its services, but she couldn't imagine any message from that world that she would be happy to receive.

* * *

**Albus**

It was fully dark outside by the time Albus went back to the hospital wing to hear how the matron and her patient had fared. Poppy Pomfrey met him at the door with a finger to her lips.

"He's asleep," she said in a low voice, slipping out to talk to him in the corridor. "Didn't need much persuasion this time, either." She, too, looked tired and exhausted.

"How did it go?"

"We'll have to wait for the swelling to go down to be sure, but I'd say better than I'd have thought possible." She attempted a smile, but it disappeared again quickly.

"But -?" Albus enquired gently.

She sighed. "You know how they say that you really have to mean a curse for it to work? Well, I've learned today that I'm simply not ruthless enough for some things."

"So he -?" Albus guessed.

Poppy nodded unhappily. "It was... disturbing, to be honest. The scorch marks will take a week to fade. But you expected that, didn't you?" she asked, eyeing him shrewdly.

"I thought it possible, yes."

"He's - he's just so - I worry, Albus." Her voice was heavy with concern.

"I know, Poppy," he assured her. "So do I."

What Albus couldn't bring himself to tell her was that it had likely been a welcome outlet, too, and that he would not have presumed to dissuade her patient from making use of it, if it was what he felt he needed. The only thing that pained Albus was that it had come at the price of distressing even the most stouthearted matron their school had ever had.

* * *

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

**Severus**

Pure exhaustion gifted him eight full hours of natural sleep. Another dose of Dreamless Sleep, when he briefly resurfaced in the evening, saw him through the first half of the night. But it was no use in the waking hours that followed.

The pain in his hand, a constant companion now for twelve days running, was becoming an old friend. Predictable. Containable. The other pain, the new one, was a different matter. It coursed through his very veins. Sometimes it raged at him, tearing at him with sharp talons. Sometimes it turned him to ice, numbing everything. It howled sometimes, and it whispered at others. But it never went away even for a moment.

He spent some time pacing in the darkness, his thoughts turning and turning in the same circles that his feet traced on the floor of the hospital wing. When this led him nowhere, he spent the rest of the night crouched on the stone windowsill, looking out into the starless November sky until the sun finally rose, supremely indifferent as always to the misery of mortal men.

It would have been easy to feel caged and confined, but he didn't, not yet at any rate. He knew that the doors weren't locked. Nothing would keep him back if he decided to leave. The same applied to Madam Pomfrey's office and the well-stocked medicine cupboard in there. It was a veritable poison cabinet if you knew what to do with the contents, but she was making no detectable effort to keep him out of it. He wasn't sure whether he found that deeply comforting or deeply insulting.

For the time being, however, he was quite content with his current state of limbo. As long as he stayed in here, there was no need to confront the realities that waited outside. And that one wild outburst of unmediated brutality, in the hour or so that he and Poppy Pomfrey had spent doing desperate things to the bones of his hand, had satisfied any need for action three times over.

It had also made them both curiously wary of each other. They had spoken little since, but even so, they had already gone back to disagreeing about absolutely everything. She insisted that he put his arm in a sling to rest his hand. He found it hampering and uncomfortable. She urged him to eat some breakfast when the house-elves brought it up from the kitchen. He wasn't hungry. He suggested that they use a Deflating Draught on the still swollen fingers. She was concerned about overdoing things. By mid-morning, they were both in a towering temper and heartily sick of each other's company.

They grudgingly compromised on a three-fifths diluted version of the Deflating Draught. Poppy Pomfrey went into her office to make it. He felt that the fumes that soon wafted out of the door she had left open were a deliberate provocation. He could _smell_ where she had gone wrong.

"That's at best a one-fifth dilution," he said when she came back out of her office with a poultice of the draught ready. It should have been obvious to her from the much too light green colour alone.

"Are you saying that I can't count to five?" she replied tartly.

"You obviously can't. Who taught you to put in the essence of arnica at the same time as the root of devil's claw? They cancel each other out that way. Might as well soak my hand in pumpkin juice for all the good this will do." A little voice inside his head protested that she had probably meant well and just wanted to save time, but having someone to berate was so satisfying that he paid no attention to it.

She set her tray down on the bedside table so hard that it rattled. "Oh, if you know _so_ much better -"

"- 'go and make it yourself'?" he suggested, taking savage pleasure in the way she grimaced at his words. "That's not likely to happen any time soon, is it, if even a fully qualified Healer needs reminding of the simplest -"

That did it. Her lips became a thin, hard line, and she turned and pointed resolutely to the door. "Out," she said in that dangerous low voice that he remembered only too well from his student days. "Get out. Now."

"Really? You think you -"

"Yes, I can. Headmaster's orders. 'If he looks ready to throw things, send him up to me,' he said. The password is 'jelly slugs'. You know the way."

* * *

Severus marched out of the hospital wing without another word. Moments later, he found himself ascending the spiral staircase to the Headmaster's office. The door at the top opened of its own accord to admit him, and he stepped into the familiar room.

Albus Dumbledore stood by one of the delicate tables carrying his many magical instruments, his back to the door. There was a tinkling sound, and wisps of green smoke wafted up from whatever he was working on.

"Very good," Severus heard him mutter. "But in essence intact?"

The smoke intensified and seemed to take a specific form, but the tall figure of the Headmaster and the wide sleeves of his robes hid the details from sight. A moment later, he ended the experiment with a tap of his wand, and the smoke dissolved.

"Ah, Severus," he said as he turned towards his visitor, as if he had only then become aware of his presence. "There you are."

He invited his guest to sit down in front of his massive desk. They settled down facing each other across it.

"I see Poppy Pomfrey is jolly well fed up with you," Dumbledore observed. "And I can tell from your expression that the feeling is mutual. So I suggest that we consider the next step."

"You want me to go and pack my things?"

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "On the contrary."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, as you are aware," Dumbledore pointed out mildly, "I am, among many other things, also responsible for the running of this school, and I like it to run smoothly. In my view, that includes not depriving our students of their Potions classes for longer than absolutely necessary."

"What's that to do with me?"

The Headmaster's ancient face set in a rather stern expression. "You made a promise. In this very room, a mere thirty-six hours ago. Are you planning to go back on it already?"

"I agreed to keeping an eye on the Potter boy," Severus objected at once, "not to continuing this -" He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "- farce."

"You spent a year as Professor Slughorn's adjunct. I can assure you that he for one saw nothing farcical in the quality of your work."

"You only appointed me as his successor because it was convenient for our mission."

"And where do you think Harry Potter will spend the second half of his childhood, Severus?"

Severus shifted in his chair. The prospect made him, to put it mildly, extremely uncomfortable. "His mother was Muggle-born," he protested weakly. "He might not even be magical..." He was grasping at straws, and he knew he ought to feel ashamed.

Dumbledore treated the suggestion with the regard it deserved. He laughed it off. "Oh, I _ask_ you. If anyone's sure to get the letter -"

"Dumbledore." Severus didn't know how to make this clearer than it should have been already. "I was _not_ cut out to be a teacher. Never was, never will be."

"Ah. And do you think that _I_ was?"

The Headmaster regarded him steadily, his clear blue eyes peering at him over his half-moon spectacles. It was a fair question. Under different circumstances, it might even have been an interesting question. But in order to attempt an answer, as Severus was uncomfortably aware, one would have to look far into the unplumbed depths of the human soul, and that was a dangerous endeavor at the best of times.

"I should have said there were plenty of benefits to outweigh any reservations you may have," the Headmaster continued in a more conversational tone. "Ours is an old and very well-respected profession. And I believe I need not mention the convenience of free board and lodging… or the unlimited opportunities for research in one's free time... We could even revive the old tradition of hosting the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers' annual conference here at Hogwarts, if you're interested."

"Are you trying to bribe me now?"

Dumbledore's blue eyes twinkled. "Of course I am. Feel free to succumb to the temptation." He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands. "But if you've got any other plans what to do with the next seventeen years of your life…"

It was remarkable how much hardness the man managed to conceal behind a grandfatherly visage and flamboyant velvet robes. He could twist a knife in a wound without his benign smile ever wavering. Severus found himself torn, not for the first time, between hatred and admiration.

The Headmaster was right, of course. Where did a man go when he had nothing to offer to the wizarding world apart from a spectacular Potions N.E.W.T., a penchant for the Dark Arts and a spot on his arm that he would have to hide from sight for the rest of his life? Into the bowels of St. Mungo's, toiling like a house-elf to keep the hospital's medicine cupboards replenished with the same old never-changing mixtures? Or to Diagon Alley as an apothecary's assistant, measuring out ingredients for clueless students and would-be herbalist housewives with a smile on his face? It had seemed like an absolute impossibility back when he had graduated from Hogwarts, and it still didn't bear thinking about now.

"And besides," Dumbledore went on, pressing home his advantage, "Hogwarts would not only like its Potions Master back. Slytherin also needs its Head of house."

"Not that as well!"

"You know the requirements the four founders set down. You're the only member of the faculty who qualifies."

"Dumbledore - exam panic… careers advice… home-sick first years..." As usual, his lack of coherence was testament to the extent of his discomfort.

Dumbledore brushed all that aside. "If you can't deal with it, delegate it."

"But -"

"Remember whose children we've got in there now. And think of the new generation that will follow after them. I was too careless in the past. I need you there."

Severus began to wonder what else Albus Dumbledore was planning to ask of him over the course of the next seventeen years, and it occurred to him that he might be selling himself short.

"Did you just say _unlimited_ opportunities for research?" he asked quickly.

"Yes, I did," the Headmaster replied earnestly. "I see no reason to impose any restrictions. Do you?"

Again, as in the case of Poppy Pomfrey and her poison cupboard, Severus would have given a lot to know whether his counterpart was being criminally naive or unbelievably astute. He decided to put it to the test. "Then why don't you let me teach Defence against the Dark Arts? I could do that with one hand. I could start tomorrow."

"There is no vacancy," Dumbledore pointed out innocently.

"There will be by the end of the school year."

"And the year after that?"

The question hung in the air for an uncomfortably long time. Then the Headmaster shook his head.

"No, Severus," he said firmly. "By all means apply, and feel free to express your disappointment at my refusal with as much vehemence as you please. As a matter of fact, I would urge you to keep applying every year. It will add a very convincing touch of colour to the impression you'll want to convey to the world. But be assured that the day that I appoint you to that job will never come as long as you still want it."

Dumbledore rose from his chair as if their conversation was at an end, and walked over to the spindle-legged table he had been working at earlier. Severus turned in his chair to follow him with his eyes. The Headmaster absentmindedly straightened one of his instruments.

"I'm honestly surprised at your reluctance," he said, his eyes on the delicate silver implement. "You know as well as I do where your greatest talent lies." He abruptly turned back around. "What's keeping you from employing it to everyone's best advantage?"

Severus wordlessly held up his left hand. They had managed to restore it to its former shape, and the discolouration was starting to fade, but it was painfully obvious that it still wasn't working the way it should, every move stiff and awkward.

The Headmaster didn't seem impressed. "That can be amended -"

"- in the _Muggle_ way." Severus put as much scorn into his voice as he could.

"Well, you heard Madam Pomfrey. There are things that can't be set right with the wave of a wand."

"You don't say."

And who was the old man to decide for him what conclusion he could or couldn't draw from that? Who except he himself had the right to determine whether a pain was still bearable, or no longer?

The image of a goblet appeared before his mind's eye, filled with a gently steaming liquid of just the right scent and consistency for an expertly made Draught of Peace. The unusual pearly sheen on its surface was the only indication of what was wrong with it.

He realised too late what was going on. Eye contact and poor defences, very low after days of pain and fatigue and exposal to the guards of Azkaban, had made him an easy victim. He wrenched his eyes away furiously from the Headmaster's piercing gaze.

"Don't _do_ that!" he snapped.

"Give yourself until the New Year," Dumbledore replied calmly. "If you can make it again by then, I give you my word that I won't stop you."

He looked as if he meant it, too.

"And until then?" Severus asked after a moment.

"Occupy yourself as best as you can. Relearn to write. Relearn your wandwork. Just give your fingers regular exercise. Whatever works is fine. Take up a hobby, I don't care."

Dumbledore's tone was deceptively conversational again, but it gave Severus the unpleasant feeling that the Headmaster had something very specific on his mind that he was supposed to figure out on his own. It was irritating. It was something _teachers_ did.

"What do you mean?" he demanded impatiently.

"Well, if your imagination doesn't suffice to supply the obvious answer, then maybe you should consult your sister."

It had come out so quickly and so casually that at first, Severus thought he had misheard. "My sister?" he repeated a little stupidly. "Kyra?" Saying her name aloud after such a long time should have felt like trying out a foreign word that he wasn't sure how to pronounce, but it came out naturally enough.

"Yes. I'm glad you remember her."

Another rush of images passed through Severus' mind, but he was sure that this time, they hadn't been called forth by anyone except himself.

He stood at the bottom of the narrow staircase of their house, still so small that his head was on a level with the bannister. The sound of the bow on the strings of her cello, wandering up and down the musical scale in a simple etude, was coming down towards him from the bedroom they shared. She had only this one book that she played from over and over, but he never tired of it. Only too happy to leave rage in the living room and misery in the kitchen to themselves, he climbed the stairs, snuck inside and sat on his bed to watch and listen. She never acknowledged his presence until she had played her fill, which could take hours. But then, invariably, she'd turn around and ask "Want a go?", and he'd always say yes, bursting with pride that he was allowed a tiny share in the escape.

But he could see the small bedroom as it had been only a couple of years later, too. No more music. Her bed stripped of its covers. The corner by the wardrobe, where the cello case had had its place, vacated. That was when he had started spending all of his time outside. The emptiness of that room had been too much to bear for his seven-year-old self.

"Kyra won't even want to talk to me," he said, back in the present.

Albus Dumbledore smiled. "She tells me otherwise."

* * *

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

**Kyra**

The orchestra filed out into the brightly lit corridor behind the stage of the Town Hall, the thunderous applause still ringing in their ears, and Kyra felt the surge of adrenaline that had carried her through the performance recede. The cold white neon light was a welcome change from the stuffy heat of a concert hall filled to the last seat, but it also made her shiver.

It was crowded and noisy out here, too. Kyra was immediately engulfed in a throng of people. Technicians stood ready to clear the stage as soon as the audience vacated the hall. The stage manager hurried past, giving the musicians a grinning thumbs-up. The conductor, Simon, whom tradition had required to leave the hall ahead of his orchestra, now moved among them like a whirling dervish, the tails of his fine dress coat flapping, his shock of brown curls standing on end and his smile pulling harder than ever at the corners of his rather wide mouth. As always, he insisted on thanking everyone personally for their contribution to the evening's success. A more nuanced postmortem could wait until later.

As soon as Simon had finished his round, the musicians started dispersing, keen to pack up their instruments and get out of their finery. People brushed past Kyra, chattering merrily. Hands patted her on the shoulder in passing, and kind words and laughter flew back and forth. It was therefore only with half an ear that she heard their conductor address someone further off in the crowd.

"Ah, Professor! What an honour to have you here tonight!"

"The honour is all mine, Simon," a deep male voice replied pleasantly. "I assure you that Edward would have been enchanted to hear you all do such justice to his work."

Maybe it was the odd choice of words, or the even odder implication, or something vaguely familiar in the deep voice – Kyra immediately turned around to look.

She hadn't known the voice, but she knew the man who had spoken by sight, and quickly putting two and two together, she thought she also knew his name. It suited him extremely well. He was an elderly but imposingly tall gentleman, dressed in a slightly old-fashioned but impeccably tailored midnight-blue suit, complete with a silk waistcoat and gold watch-chain. A long beard hung down to his waist, and he had tied his sweeping mane of silver hair into a neat ponytail. A pair of half-moon spectacles were perched on his very crooked nose. She couldn't remember ever seeing him at a symphonic concert, but he was a regular attendant at chamber music events in the area. She had always taken him for no more than a local connoisseur with a somewhat eccentric dress sense. How naive she had been.

She also knew instantly that it wasn't Albus Dumbledore whom she had really turned around to look for. Kyra would have lied if she had claimed that she had somehow sensed their presence in the concert hall. She had definitely not known that there was a little boy in the room with her again, sitting somewhere in the shadows, absorbed in the music she was making and maybe still happy to lose himself in it along with her. But there he was, right at Albus Dumbledore's side.

There was no mistaking him, not even for a moment. A man now, of course, no longer a boy, although a lot of the skinny child still lingered in his lean stature and angular shoulders. Most of the children growing up in Spinner's End, herself included, had constantly looked in need of more sunlight and fresh air, and he still looked like that even now, his pale face set off by black hair that came down almost to his shoulders. Dressed in a plain black suit over a shirt of the same colour, he could easily have passed for one of the many students that populated the local art scene. But his deep-set eyes, nearly as black as his hair and fixed on her with unsettling intensity, could have been those of a much older man.

Kyra stood rooted to the spot. A part of her felt a mad urge to rush towards him, to take his hands, to make sure he was real. But another part of her worried that it would startle him, that he would shrink away from her, maybe even disappear into thin air, as she knew his kind could.

She became aware that the chatter immediately around her was dying away, and that people were following her gaze to see what, or who, had so captured her attention. Kyra's heart started beating very fast. She had never imagined this moment to take place in public, and it better hadn't.

She hastily picked up her cello and made a bee-line for Simon and his two companions. By the time she reached them, the hustle and bustle in the narrow space and the volume of conversation were already back to the previous level, masking whatever they would have to say to each other.

Albus Dumbledore spared her the agony of making formal introductions, or in fact any polite conversation at all.

"I apologise for our sudden appearance," he said, stepping forward and sketching a little bow. "But after your very kind response to my letter, we were anxious to meet you as soon as possible. I hope you can spare us a few minutes of your time?"

"If you want to talk somewhere quiet," Simon suggested immediately, "why don't you use my dressing room? I'll be a while yet."

Kyra's jaw dropped, but Simon had already moved on to the next group of people before Kyra could so much as string together two words to thank him for this incredible generosity. Albus Dumbledore, too, stood back, and brother and sister made their way in silence to the blessed privacy of the conductor's room.

* * *

Kyra pushed the door open, fumbled for the light switch and went inside. Out of pure habit, the first thing she looked for was a safe place to put her cello. Behind her, her brother closed the door, and Kyra realised just how rude it was to put the needs of her instrument above those of a family member she hadn't seen in fourteen years.

She quickly turned back to him. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

The deep voice shouldn't have come as a shock, but it did. Only a moment later, Kyra realised that the family likeness had played a trick on her. This was man's voice, too, but it was definitely different from the one that had used to make her flinch all the time.

"I meant for – " She waved her hand at her cello, then decided that there was no point in trying to explain. "Won't you sit?" she asked instead, indicating the mismatched chairs that were scattered around the room.

They both sat, eyeing each other in awkward silence.

"Did you enjoy the concert?" Kyra asked then, and immediately regretted the question. It might have been better than talking about the weather, but only just.

Her brother fortunately didn't seem to mind. "Yes," he said slowly. "Yes, that music is… powerful."

She smiled.

"I didn't know about this," he continued, his eyes moving around the room. "That you were famous, I mean. And that you were married."

She laughed. "Nice summary. I didn't know _you_ were even still alive."

She had said it lightly, but it did nothing to lighten the mood. On the contrary – he pursed his lips, and his dark eyes narrowed suspiciously. It gave him a strangely calculating look.

"And I'm not actually famous," she hastened to clarify, gesturing self-consciously around the small room. "I don't know what possessed Simon to do this. I'm one among many, and I'm content with that."

"Are you?" He sounded sceptical.

"Absolutely. I'm not made for the spotlight of a solo career. I'd much rather be part of something that's greater than myself than be great on my own account."

It seemed she had struck another nerve without meaning to. His expression was very hard to read – she detected no outright approval, but she couldn't help feeling that he understood what she meant.

"Besides, my home is here in Birmingham, with David. My husband," she elaborated. "I wouldn't for the world want to exchange that for a succession of lonely hotel rooms. And I couldn't stand the public scrutiny. Imagine, interviews… photo calls, God forbid…" She smiled again. "Nobody with the Snape nose is ever going to win a beauty contest."

"Oh, really?"

It was completely impossible to tell whether he was amused or offended. Kyra resisted the temptation to turn and look into the large mirror on the far wall of the room, above the dressing table. She didn't need to see their reflections side by side to remember that nature had furnished them both with the same unfavourable combination of their father's nose and their mother's long face.

"But enough of me," she concluded the matter, remembering Albus Dumbledore's message and the real reason why they were here. "What about you? What have you been up to? I mean - you're really a - you did go to school up there, and everything?"

"Yes." She saw him bite back an "of course".

"And were you happy there?"

She could tell that this question was unexpected. He deliberated his answer for a moment. "On balance, no," he said then. A sardonic half-smile flitted across his face. "Feel free to enjoy the poetic justice."

Kyra was silent. She had aimed for mere small talk, but she had just learned something that astonished her.

She had always assumed that their mother's fate had been a strange exception to the rule that magic could put everything right, and that having magical abilities rendered you immune to the problems and afflictions that plagued ordinary mortals. In the stories their mother had told them when they were little, the magical world had always seemed an amazing, dazzling place where everything was possible and nothing ever hurt. There was a reason why the realisation that she was no part of it had derailed Kyra's young life. But what her brother was telling her now sounded as if there was no such rule at all. Or had he simply been another exception?

Convinced that her head would start spinning if she let her mind go further down that path right now, Kyra decided to steer the conversation back into what she thought were safer waters.

"And after school?" she asked quickly. "What came then?"

"A succession of mistakes."

"That doesn't sound good."

"It wasn't." The calculating look returned to his face. "How much has Dumbledore told you?"

"Not a whole lot," she replied truthfully, trying to recall the exact wording of the Headmaster's letter. "He just wrote that he was in touch with you, and that you were taking some time out to mull things over and find your feet. And that he believed that I could help you with that, if I wanted to meet up and talk. That was it."

Her brother was frowning. It edged some deep lines into his brow and around his mouth. He did look older than he was, and the austere black of his clothes didn't help with that impression. He had never been an easy-going person – there had been so little reason to be, in that household – but there was a tenseness about him now that was much more pronounced than anything she remembered. The light was a little kinder in here, but out in the brightly-lit corridor, he had looked downright ill, too.

Kyra had no idea what Albus Dumbledore had meant by 'time out' – from what exactly? But she could easily believe that her brother had been through some troubled times lately. He still owed her an explanation for missing their mother's funeral, too.

"And I told Dumbledore yes," she went on. "Or, to be precise, I said I'd have time after the concert. I didn't expect him to take that quite so literally. You gave me a start when you turned up just now."

"Yes, he likes to catch people unawares. I'd say it was a dirty trick, if it wasn't so effective."

"That's nice," said Kyra drily. "Is it true, then? What he wrote in the letter, I mean?"

Her brother crossed his arms. "I suppose so. Except for the bit about finding my feet. They're as firmly attached to the lower ends of my legs as they've always been." He stretched out his legs towards her as if to prove it. Kyra wanted to laugh, but there was no trace of a smile around his lips, nor even in his eyes. "What I need to find again is the use of my left hand." He took it out from where he had tucked it under his right arm, and flexed his fingers to demonstrate.

Kyra lacked the knowledge to tell at a glance what exactly was wrong there, but the stiffness was obvious, and there were the dark spots on his skin that looked strangely like burn marks.

"I'm sorry," she said. "What happened there? An accident?"

"Of sorts."

"And you can't just -" She made a twisting motion with her own hand, because that was how she vaguely remembered it. "You know - _Reparo_, or something?" That one had been a fixture in their family life, usually in consequence of things being thrown, which had been a fixture in its own right.

"We've exhausted those options. The Healer's advice is, essentially, to wait, hope and exercise."

They were called Healers, not doctors. She had forgotten that, too. "Oh. Right. Well, that makes sense. It's what we'd do, too." There it was again, this strange new idea that magic, too, sometimes hit walls. It was hard to get used to indeed. "What's it to do with me, though? How am I supposed to help, I mean? I know nothing about medical things."

"But you know all about playing the cello."

* * *

**Severus**

Kyra had grasped immediately what he had meant. He had not needed to explain the plan to her, and even more importantly, he had not needed to ask her to be part of it, and he was grateful for that.

She had laughed at the idea, but because she had liked it, not because she found it ridiculous. She had made a quick calculation and then announced with a smile that yes, she could fit one more student into her schedule, provided that Thursday afternoons were fine with him and he could come to her house. She had expressed some concern, with another sideways glance at his bad hand, whether it really was the right thing to do. But she had accepted his assurance that all they could do was try.

The arrangements had been made so quickly, in fact, that Severus himself had almost started worrying whether it had been a wise decision. Misreading his hesitation when they both rose to their feet to say good-bye for the moment, she had just smiled again.

"Don't worry, it will all come back. We'll just pick up where we left off, shall we?"

That would be easier said than done, especially in the ways that had nothing to do with playing the cello. Kyra lived in the Muggle world now, and if he wanted to be a part of her life again, even just for an hour every Thursday afternoon, he would have to banish everything to do with magic from his appearance, his demeanour and, if he could, from his mind, too. Kyra's husband, Severus had ascertained straight away, had no idea that Kyra came from a part-wizarding family. So the slightest hint of this would not only cause upheaval in her marriage, it would also get Kyra into trouble with the Ministry for breaking the International Statute of Secrecy. But it wasn't only that; it was the idea that they would be doing this by the rules of her world that unsettled him most of all. He had, after all, been raised to think of it as far inferior to his own.

As if to add insult to injury, it was the Muggle world that now proved his own safest refuge, too.

Having wrested a respite until the New Year from Albus Dumbledore, Severus could not possibly spend the intervening time in the familiar comfort of Hogwarts Castle. He could not stand the idea of the Headmaster's watchful eye on him every day while he struggled to recover both a fully functional body and the remnants of his dignity. Hiding in his rooms was not an option either. He hardly dared set foot in his own office any more, where the many things in their jars looked at him reproachfully with their sightless eyes, wondering what on earth he, with his crippled hand, even still kept them for.

He packed a suitcase with some essentials, nodded good-bye to the rather impressive collection of books that he had accumulated during his short time as a Hogwarts teacher - it did hurt somewhat to leave those behind - and walked out of the castle. Beyond the winged boars' gates, he halted to consider his destination.

He had been adrift before, of course, before that fateful night on the windy hilltop when he had made the deal with Albus Dumbledore that had catapulted him from obscurity into the position of a Hogwarts professor. But back then, there had been a network of support. Quite a number of outwardly reputable families had been clandestine supporters of the Dark Lord, and they had readily provided shelter, food, applause and admiration to the young radicals who spearheaded their cause. Severus had often stayed over at the Burkes'. But with the house gutted by fire and Burke senior and his wife gutted with grief, this was obviously no longer an option. Besides, it would have been madness to show his face anywhere in Knockturn Alley these days. He hadn't imagined Mulciber's suspicious looks in the weeks and months before the Dark Lord's downfall. Nor could he believe that Mulciber had locked him inside a burning room out of pure panic, or by accident. And Mulciber, together with Avery, was still at large.

Severus had taken care, during the last days at Hogwarts, to check every _Daily Prophet_ for news of them. The Ministry's wanted list was slowly shortening as the Aurors rounded up the remaining known Death Eaters one by one. The _Prophet_ had just crowed particularly loudly over the arrest of Antonin Dolohov, justly so. But quite apart from his schoolmates, there were also other and more formidable followers of the Dark Lord still out there, like the Lestranges, The first thing that Severus would have to relearn to do with his hand was to defend himself. And until then, he'd have to do everything in his power to avoid running across any of his old allies.

But taking up quarters somewhere in the more respectable part of the wizarding world was hardly more inviting. It was a very small world after all, where gossip travelled with lightning speed, and he didn't want to imagine what those whispers would make of him if he was seen to have left Hogwarts with nowhere else to go.

For a very brief moment, he considered contacting his one-time mentor Horace Slughorn, but he dismissed the idea almost as soon as it occurred to him. The Dark Lord's orders to either recruit or eliminate the former Head of Slytherin house had driven the old man underground, and Severus was by no means sure of his welcome even if he did manage to track Slughorn down.

There was no help for it. If he wanted to truly disappear from the picture for a while, and attract no unwanted attention from either side, it would have to be the Muggle world.

He Disapparated without looking back.

* * *

Birmingham, Kyra's city, would be as good a place to start as any.

He rematerialised in the deserted yard behind the tropical greenhouse of the city's Botanical Gardens, changed into the Muggle clothes he had worn to Kyra's concert, curled his good hand around the handle of his wand inside his pocket, and set out.

He spent the day wandering the length and breadth of the extensive parkland, unnoticed and unchallenged. The herb garden was of particular interest, even at this dismal time of the year. Under different circumstances, it would have been difficult to resist the temptation to help himself to a few samples of the rarer species. He had never seen Kelpieleaf grow in a Muggle park or garden before, but for some reason, it had found its way here.

When night fell and the park closed, he withdrew into the greenhouse, which he unlocked and relocked with a tap of his wand. He threw every protective spell he could think of at the glass walls, then settled down in a corner. Sleep was unlikely in these strange surroundings, and it was also an uninviting prospect, now that he had cut himself off from Poppy Pomfrey's supply of Dreamless Sleep. But it was warm in here, and quiet, and the smell of damp earth and greenery was soothing.

He filled the wait for Thursday with more excursions, first inside and then outside the gardens, although he kept the latter to the necessary minimum. There were no unpleasant encounters – he might have been wearing an Invisibility Cloak for all the attention people paid him - but he still felt too vulnerable out there in the streets of the city. He grew uneasy when he heard people walking behind him, and would draw aside to the let them pass, just to make sure they were on some harmless Muggle errand. Some of the old reflexes still worked, but some of them did not. Most irritatingly, it was always his left hand that went for his wand, even though he knew that in a true emergency, its grip on it would still be too feeble. He had let his wand slip from his fingers once; he wasn't going to let it happen again.

Mentally, he spent quite some time racking his brains trying to recall the exact sequence of events back at the Burkes' house in Knockturn Alley on Halloween night. His memory of it was muddled. Had Alastor Moody called him down from the burning gallery _before_ Mulciber had slammed the door to freedom in his face, or after? And had Moody worded it as a general call for surrender, such as any Death Eater could expect to hear when Aurors were closing in, or had it been anything specific that gave his secret away? He had no answer to this, which meant that he would have to assume the worst.

In conclusion, the less time he spent out in the open, among wizards or among Muggles, the better.

* * *

When Thursday came, he Apparated to the street corner and covered the remaining few yards on foot. Passing the large and well-kept houses neighbouring Kyra's gave him a good idea what to expect, but he still felt terribly out of place as he walked through the iron gate and up the steps to her front door.

She opened almost at once when he rang the bell, smiled and showed him into the sitting room.

It was a large, well-lit space that spanned the whole generous length of the ground floor, with a bay window on the street side and another one that gave onto the back garden at the other end. A plush white carpet muffled every step. A shining black grand piano dominated the front half of the room, surrounded by crowded bookshelves. The fireplace was boarded up and the house kept comfortably warm against the rainy November day by some modern Muggle ingenuity. On the mantelpiece stood a couple of silver picture frames containing stationary photographs. Among them was a portrait shot of a teenage girl in school uniform whom Severus took a moment to place, and a picture of Kyra and her husband. They stood arm in arm on the steps of what looked like the registry office. She was clutching a little bouquet of roses, while he, bearded and bespectacled and looking at least twenty years her senior, held a sheaf of official-looking documents. He was beaming. Kyra's face displayed what was probably the closest approximation to beaming that she was capable of.

The real Kyra, who had followed his sweeping glance, smiled wryly. "It is a step up from frostwork on the bedroom windows in winter, and a bath in the zinc tub every fortnight, isn't it? But it's David's. All I had to do was move in."

Her tone was apologetic. He wondered whether she talked like this to everyone, or whether she was playing down her good fortune out of consideration for him in particular. He also cursed Albus Dumbledore for suggesting to her that she should.

"So what happened to the old house?" he asked, trying for a conversational tone.

There was nothing apologetic about her response this time. "It stands empty. I never go back there, and I'm told those properties are unsaleable, so..." She shrugged. "Do you want it? Do you need a place to stay?"

He could see her expression change again, from indifference to concern, and he realised that he was taking much too long to answer the question.

"I... no, I couldn't just..." It would be the perfect answer to a pressing problem, but he didn't feel he had the right.

"No, no, you can have it," Kyra assured him quickly. "You'll be doing me a favour. I'll give you the keys."

"Seriously?"

"Would I suggest it else? Move in, or tear it down, whatever, I don't care. And now let's get playing."

* * *

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

**Kyra**

Kyra led her brother to the back of the living room, where the light was best. Two chairs stood there waiting for them, and two cello cases, one that housed her current favourite instrument and a very old one of battered black leather that would be familiar to her brother.

"Yes, I still have that one," she said when she saw his eyes widen in surprise at the sight. "I don't play it any more these days, but you'll need one, and I figured that if we are to pick up where we left off, we might as well do it properly."

They unpacked the old cello together, and he took it into his hands with something almost like reverence. It really wasn't much to look at, with cracks in the varnish and chipped corners, but she had restrung and tuned it carefully. It would be serviceable enough for their purposes.

"Remember how to hold it?" she asked, he nodded, and she quickly abandoned questions like this for the rest of their lesson. It turned out that he remembered absolutely everything as far as the theory was concerned. She shouldn't have been so surprised, seeing how many hours – days and maybe even weeks of his life, taken all together – he had spent watching and listening to her play. There was no need to name the strings, or explain any of the technique, or to encourage him to try a simple scale, which he did readily. It was scratchy going, of course, nowhere near the rich, velvety sounds that Kyra could have produced. The notes were almost all violently off-key, too.

He pulled a face and broke off. "It's so small," he complained, gesturing at the instrument that had been absurdly bulky in his arms back then but fitted there perfectly now.

"Well, you've grown a bit," she smiled. "Try again, and keep your fingers much closer together this time."

From that point onwards, all Kyra had to do was make sure they didn't overdo things, but that was a serious concern. Minutes in, Severus had started sweating with the effort of making his fingers do his bidding. She thought of the way he had summarised the past few years of his life as a succession of mistakes, and wondered just how big they would have been to exact such a price.

"Go again?" he asked when they had taken a short break, she nodded, he picked up the bow, and the memories overwhelmed her.

It was as if nothing had changed at all since those times back in their shared bedroom. He still tilted his head to the side like that to watch his fingers move. The way he frowned when a note was off-key was the same, too, as was the way he tucked his overgrown hair behind his ear when it fell into his eyes. The one thing he didn't do any more was dangle his legs from the chair, because he was too tall now. And –

He paused, as if he had sensed her mind wandering. "What is it?"

"Nothing," she assured him quickly, shaking her head. "It's just – you used to do exactly that."

"Exactly what?"

"All of it. Except –" She hesitated to say it, but then forged ahead. "Except you also used to smile."

"Did I," was all he replied.

* * *

Kyra was mortified. Their first lesson hadn't been a success at all. Or if it was, it was none of her doing. She should never have burdened her brother with those reminiscences. The look he had given her when she had shared them with him had been so devoid of emotion that he either didn't remember these things at all, or he didn't care. She had seen him clench his teeth while his fingers seized up. What had she been thinking, to remind him of happier times at such a moment?

She had been such a fool, to invite him into her house and back into her life without the slightest idea how life had treated him in the intervening years. She hadn't even considered the possibility that he might be a different person now, rather than just a larger and deep-voiced version of the boy she had known so well.

But the mystery remained. He had gone to the school they had both dreamed about, but he hadn't been happy there. He was a wizard living among wizards, but they hadn't been able to heal his hand. He was probably everything now that their mother had ever wanted him to be, and yet he had forgotten how to smile.

They had concluded the lesson by piecing together some more scales so he would have something to work on during the week, but they had only spoken about technicalities then, keeping a careful distance between them. And although Severus had taken the cello with him when he left, determined to practise, Kyra fully expected him not to return the next week. She found herself torn between hoping that he would, and hoping that he wouldn't.

"I don't know," she told David truthfully that evening, when her husband came home from his own day of lessons at the Conservatoire and asked her how things had gone.

David had had no reservations whatsoever when Kyra had told him that her long lost brother would be coming around once a week from now on. David knew of his existence – it had come up briefly when they had made the guest list for their wedding – but he also knew that Kyra preferred not to talk much about her birth family. He had never pressed her for details, and he didn't do it now. He was the kindest and most generous man she had ever met, but Kyra did worry sometimes how long he would still be content with knowing so little about the woman he loved.

She had volunteered a few more snippets of information this time, feeling that it would have been churlish as well as risky to leave her husband completely in the dark. She had told David that her brother was four years younger than her, and very different from her, and had gone to boarding school in Scotland, which was how they had lost touch. It was all true enough. David, having met Theresa, knew enough of the family history to understand how Kyra had come to leave home early, without any need to introduce the concept of magic into the story as well. And Kyra certainly wasn't going to divulge that now. Quite apart from the rule of secrecy, even David wouldn't accept the existence of a whole secret magical world without turning a hair.

"I'd really like to meet him," he was saying now.

The familiar sense of foreboding kicked in with full force, but Kyra did the only thing she decently could.

"I'll ask him," she said.

* * *

**Severus**

Severus went to Spinner's End that same evening and let himself into the empty house by the back door. He had come close to pointing out to Kyra that he didn't actually need a key in order to gain access to a locked house, but now that he was here, it felt right to use the one she had given him.

Once inside, he went to work straight away.

With his wand in his right hand, to give his left some rest, he cleaned out, sorted, Repaired, Transfigured, Vanished and burned things for hours. By the time he collapsed on the threadbare sofa, long past midnight, he had managed to give the tiny sitting room at least the semblance of a civilised living space. He had also noted that the wand movements were coming more fluently now than when he had first tried switching his wand to his right. It was a matter of focus much more than of manual dexterity, and he hadn't nearly exhausted the possibilities yet. It was a good thought, and he fell asleep going through the mental catalogue of every spell and every charm and every curse he knew, picturing each wand move right-handed ten times over.

The first thing that occurred to him the next morning was that he had been criminally neglectful of his personal safety the night before. He made up for it with more wandwork, this time to render the little house Apparition-proof and Muggle-repellent. He also took a closer look at the fireplace. The pot of Floo Powder that used to sit on the mantel was gone, so the house had probably been disconnected from the Floo network when its last magical inhabitant had died. Indeed, the house retained very few traces of witchcraft and wizardry at all. Some of the kitchen appliances might be persuaded to remember how to respond to magic, the way they had done when his mother had been in charge there, but other than that, the Ministry had done a neat job on the place. Not that he had seriously expected to find his mother's wand at the back of a kitchen drawer or her precious set of Gobstones in a dusty cupboard. It was a little sobering, but it also gave him a blank canvas.

But housework and home improvement, even as an excuse to practise wand moves, held limited appeal after a while. On the third day after his first lesson with Kyra, Severus decided that it was time, now that he had a home and even a hobby – he played his scales every day - , to find himself some respectable employment as well.

The solution presented itself when he perused an article in the _Daily Prophet_, which he was still taking. It highlighted the yearly pre-Christmas appeal for donations to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, and there it was - the one place in the wizarding world outside Hogwarts where his presence would attract no attention or comment from either side. The hospital's reading room was open to the public but likely to be empty most of the time. Why had he not thought of it before?

Severus soon fell into an almost comfortable routine. Every morning, he Apparated from his backyard straight into the throng of commuters spilling out from the Oxford Circus tube station in London. A few hundred yards on, he stepped through the magical barrier guarded by the dummy in the shop window of the run-down department store – it readily accepted "study" as a valid reason to request entry -, and made his way to the wood-panelled room on the ground floor.

If he had loved one thing about his teaching post at Hogwarts, it was that at long last, its entire library had been his to explore, without fear of being thrown out of the Restricted Section by that jealous watchdog of a librarian, and without fear of being hexed from behind a bookshelf by fellow students who thought that anyone sitting down with a book was issuing an invitation.

This was nearly as good. The reading room at St. Mungo's was much smaller than the Hogwarts library, and less well-organised, but it still contained a wealth of books, encyclopedias, journals and boxes full of index cards with recipes and accounts of experiments. It was comforting to know that they held truths that did not change. In a room like this, Severus could almost start believing again that there were certainties that did not turn to ashes before your eyes, or melt away under your fingers like snow.

A very simple purpose of his visits to St. Mungo's, however, was to write. He brought quill and parchment and took notes of everything that he found of interest. Occasionally, when he ran out of new discoveries, he just jotted down potions recipes or lists of ingredients and their properties from memory. And with grim determination, he did it with both his left and his right hand, switching every hour. On the first day, he hadn't even dared to look over his notes again when he had packed up. But by the end of the week, they had already been partly legible.

The new handwriting that he was producing with his right hand was markedly different from his usual scrawl – still rather spiky, but larger and bolder and, eventually, easier to decipher. But he could also tell that once fully recovered, the right would have nothing on the left when it came to speed. Originally, he had meant to train his right hand as a mere back-up option, in case the left really proved irreparable. But as the days went by, he warmed to the idea that he could retain both techniques.

On some days, he even forgot what he was doing it all for. 'If you can make it again by the New Year,' Albus Dumbledore had said, and Severus would be damned if he couldn't, but he no longer thought all the time about what would happen then.

In the blink of an eye, a week had passed and it was Thursday again.

* * *

By the end of the month, Severus had graduated from scales to Kyra's old book of etudes. Kyra played along with him most of the time. He knew she did it only to spare both their ears, but it did make him feel less self-conscious. His own playing was slow going, but the agility of his fingers increased week by week. When November turned into December, he had started to produce sounds on the cello that might even pass for music, at least to an undiscerning listener.

Somewhat annoyingly, the cello didn't take kindly to Apparition. It went horribly out of tune every time it was obliged to dematerialise and rematerialise for the trip from Cokeworth to Birmingham and back. Severus had never heard of a spell that made musical instruments tune themselves, and especially in the early days, the twisting motion required to turn the tuning pegs was a penance of its own. But it was still infinitely preferable to an hour and a half either way on the Muggle bus.

Spinner's End looked just the same as it had always done, only colder and wetter. But Christmas lights and decorations had gone up all over Oxford Street, and the place was even more crowded than usual when he passed through in the mornings. The traffic, always irritating, was reaching new levels of madness. The worst day so far saw Severus forced to consider a grave breach of the International Statute of Secrecy in the form of an Impediment jinx on a couple of moronic Muggle schoolchildren who insisted on stumbling in front of a double-decker. The situation resolved itself by the screeching of brakes and much shouting and honking of horns instead, but only just.

Other than that, the days were uneventful. Avery quietly disappeared from the Ministry's wanted list at some point, but there was no news story in the _Prophet_ to go with it, so it might as well have been a printer's error.

* * *

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

**Kyra**

Once she had got over her surprise that he had returned for their second appointment at all, Kyra almost got used to her brother's visits to her house.

As a student, he was downright uncomplicated – not hugely talented, as he himself would have been the first to admit, but punctual to the minute, content with everything she suggested, and more diligent than all her other students taken together.

He was also a very unassuming guest. It was clear that he deliberately avoided running across her family, because he never lingered beyond the agreed time, and never expressed any curiosity about them. But she certainly wasn't ready for that encounter yet, either, so she didn't mind at all.

Gravity hung around him like a cloak, accentuated by the unchanging black of his attire. Sometimes Kyra thought she could see a deep sadness in his dark eyes. More often they looked shuttered, as if to repulse any attempt to find out what went on in the mind behind them. But in a strange way, reticence suited him. Maybe the most remarkable thing about him was that he had a very rare gift of keeping silences that felt natural rather than awkward. Kyra would never have thought that she could feel so comfortable talking to a person who barely talked back.

It was easy to forget that in terms of everything other than their music, they were both still walking a tightrope. There was a morass of resentment, hurt and reproach underneath it, waiting for either of them to waver and fall, and Kyra had no idea how she, for one, would extricate herself from it if it happened.

Then again, it was absurd to be sitting here in her own living room with her brother next to her week after week, and not try to iron some of that out. How would she ever get answers, if she didn't ask?

They were packing up their instruments at the end of their third lesson when she plucked up her courage and did.

"By the way…" She fiddled with the tension on her bow to avoid his eyes. "Did you ever get my letter?"

He was silent for so long that she had to look up eventually. His face was a mask. "Yes," he replied then, and clicked his cello case shut as if that was all there was to be said.

"I hoped you'd come," Kyra said quietly, "but -"

"- but you got a pair of Aurors instead."

She thought of the mysterious cloaked figures on the fringes of their mother's funeral. "If we're talking about the same people, four."

Severus raised his eyebrows. "I'm flattered."

"Who exactly are they, again?" The term wasn't familiar at all.

"People you don't want to cross."

"What happens if you do?"

"They'll stand on your hand, so you can't run away."

Both their eyes automatically went to look at the result. A number of pieces fell into place. "Good grief," Kyra said. "You were on the run from the law?"

"And the owl nearly gave me away."

Was there a note of reproach in his voice? He must know that she couldn't possibly have wanted to cause him harm by sending him the message about their mother's death, but it seemed that she had.

"But they're not – I mean, no one's after you now, are they?"

"If you mean the Ministry of Magic – no. I've been meek as a lamb recently."

Kyra's head was spinning. It seemed that Albus Dumbledore had been guilty of a gross understatement in his letter to her. 'Find his feet', indeed. Try as she might, Kyra could not bring herself to think of her little brother as a wanted criminal, nor even as a reformed criminal. What on earth had happened to make him first the one and then the other?

For a moment, he seemed undecided whether to acknowledge or ignore her unspoken question. "In your orchestra -" he began then.

"Yes?" She wondered at the sudden change of subject but went with it, mostly because she didn't know what else to say.

"- one man waves a wooden stick, and fifty people instantly jump to do his bidding. Correct?"

She would have laughed at his choice of words, but that didn't seem right, so she merely nodded.

"And you're one of those who do."

She nodded again.

"Why?"

"Because – " It was harder than she had expected to answer that in one concise sentence. "Because that's how it works," she tried. "Someone's got to call the tune, literally in this case. You can't play symphonic music if you let fifty people do what they each think is best."

"And what is it that makes _you_ so ready give up your autonomy to the man with the stick?"

Kyra thought of Simon, his inexhaustible energy, his unorthodox ideas, his unrelenting precision, and his broad, highly contagious smile. "Quite frankly, because he's a great artist. He turns us into a force that's so much stronger than the sum of our parts, if you know what I mean. I'd be a fool not to want to be part of that."

"And do you find it easy?"

"Not always," Kyra replied truthfully, still wondering where this was going. "But if it's the right person in charge, it pays off every time. It's liberating as well, to be honest," she added in an afterthought. "It gives you a place and a purpose. It's nice not to have to constantly question where you belong."

"In short, 'I'd much rather be part of something that's greater than myself than be great on my own account'?"

She smiled. "Yes, quite." She was surprised to learn that this had resonated so much with him that he still remembered her exact words, weeks later.

"Then what would you do if you found out that the man with the stick, the great artist, the leader whom you look up to as a demigod, does not deserve a shred of your loyalty?"

"I'd get out of there as fast as I could."

"There you are."

In the silence that followed, he picked up the cello case with one hand and the score from the music stand with the other. "And now I'd better get going, it's late."

He saw himself out. He had to, because Kyra had sunk back down onto her chair with her head in her hand, thunderstruck.

* * *

Kyra's thoughts revolved around little else in the days that followed. She had never before regretted dropping out of the wizarding world, but now she wished she had access to that newspaper of theirs with the funny moving photographs, or to the Wizarding Wireless Network that her mother had sometimes tuned in to during housework. Maybe they could have told her something about the demigod with the wooden stick, who had commanded the loyalty of many and yet deserved none of it.

She supposed that she could write to Albus Dumbledore and demand that he enlighten her about the specifics of why her brother always wore black and never laughed. But she suspected that he would at best speak in riddles, and at worst point out that truth was sometimes painful and often hard to come by, which would not even be news to her.

It was difficult to gauge what exactly amounted to trouble with the law in the wizarding world, too. Witches and wizards, Kyra remembered, had somewhat flexible moral standards. The way they messed with people's memories alone had always creeped her out. She knew that they did it regularly to protect their world from discovery by non-magical people, and she had spent the first days and weeks at her aunt Theresa's in constant terror that agents from the Ministry of Magic would turn up and wipe the entire memory of the first eleven years of her life from her mind. She had always hated having a wand pointed at her, even for such harmless things as fixing a torn sleeve or drying off rain-soaked clothes. So if it was all right to steal people's memories from them, how did witches and wizards even define right and wrong?

But there was a prison in the magical world, too, guarded by horrific, faceless creatures that destroyed people's souls. And if breaking that iron rule of silence and secrecy could land you there, it was unlikely that the Ministry of Magic would treat other offences with laxity.

Just how far had the mysterious man with the stick and his followers gone?

* * *

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

**Kyra**

Kyra saw her brother with different eyes when he came back the next week.

For the first time, it made sense to her just how much on the alert he always was, how his eyes darted all over the place when he entered a room, and how he looked up and tensed every time a car door was slammed shut somewhere in the street outside. But knowing the reason why did nothing to reassure her. Had he lied to her when he had said that no one was hunting for him anymore?

Kyra also caught herself wondering where he was hiding his wand. He surely carried it on his person at all times. Even their law-abiding mother always had. Kyra remembered constantly worrying that it might fall out of her handbag one day, on the bus or at the grocer's, raising questions that could not be answered.

She hadn't thought about it before, but now the very idea of such a thing in her house raised her hackles. What would she tell her family if they ever caught sight of it? Or would her brother, too, simply wave it at them and take that memory away without so much as a by-your-leave? Kyra surprised herself by just how strongly she disliked the idea of her husband and his child looking down that length of wood without knowing what it might do to them. But what was there to stop him, if the worst came to the worst?

She hated to think of her brother's presence in her house as a threat, and he certainly never did or said anything to justify it. But it was as if their conversation of the week before had cast a shadow over them. They made their way through this week's lesson with fairly good grace, but Kyra had never been less sorry to see it end.

When they went out into the hall to say goodbye, Sarah, who must have been lurking on the landing, came hopping down the stairs.

"I thought I heard voices," she greeted them innocently, jumped down the last couple of steps and landed on the carpet with the agility of a cat. She looked their visitor up and down with wide blue eyes, not bothering to hide her curiosity. "You're Kyra's brother, aren't you? The one with the cool name?"

The look that Severus gave the girl could have made a grown-up flinch, but it did nothing to abash Sarah. At thirteen, she was already more self-assured than Kyra herself would ever be.

"This is Sarah, David's daughter," Kyra introduced her.

"Are you staying for dinner?" the girl asked Severus with her trademark directness. "There'll be quiche. It's my favourite." Without waiting for an answer, she turned to her stepmother. "I'm starving, Kyra. Dad had better be home soon."

"Well, you can turn on the oven then, if it's so urgent," Kyra suggested with a somewhat laboured smile. It worked, because Sarah did disappear into the kitchen. But just then, the front door opened and David, home from the Conservatoire half an hour earlier than expected, cut off their retreat.

As Kyra had feared, David was genuinely pleased to finally meet his brother-in-law face to face. He shook hands with Severus, kissed his wife, hung up his coat and, like his daughter, took it for granted that they would be four people at dinner today instead of the usual three.

Kyra glanced at her brother. It struck her how careless they had been not to have planned for this, not to have discussed beforehand what could be said and what couldn't. But he only shrugged, which Kyra knew by now to read as 'no objection'. Well, if he could do it, then so could she.

She couldn't have been more wrong. By the time they were all seated around the kitchen table, Kyra was feeling queasy with apprehension. She should have trusted her initial instinct to avoid this situation at all cost, no matter how lame the excuse.

David had brought out a bottle of wine in honour of the occasion, and was filling two glasses. Kyra kept to water, as always, but her brother had accepted the offer. She wished she knew whether this was something to worry about. Did wizards ever drink? Their mother had never touched a drop, but was that only due to their father's unsavoury example?

"I hope you're enjoying your music," David opened the conversation, raising his glass to their guest. "I was quite touched to hear that you were going to revive that little tradition of yours. Kyra tells me you used to play together when you were children."

"Only for a short while."

"So how come you've -"

Severus shrugged. "I thought it was time I learned it properly."

"'Properly' is nice," Sarah piped up from her end of the table, pulling a face.

Her father gave her an admonishing look. "Sarah."

"What? He makes for a nice change, honestly." She flashed a cheeky grin at her father. "There's so much high art in this house, sometimes it's good to know that there are normal people in the world, too!"

Kyra saw something tug at a corner of her brother's mouth, but yet again, she had no idea whether he was amused or annoyed.

"Try living with three musicians for parents," Sarah appealed to their guest, rolling her eyes to underline the sheer intolerability of her situation.

"Sarah's mother is an opera singer. She lives in Paris," David elaborated.

"You don't feel any inclination to pursue a career in music then?" Severus asked the girl. She shook her head and shoved more quiche into her mouth.

Her father passed the salad bowl around the table. "Sarah's got quite a scientific mind, actually."

"I like hockey," Sarah declared, chewing fiercely.

There was a silence, and Kyra breathed a little more easily – until David, without the slightest malevolence, turned the conversation to a much more dangerous topic.

"I'm surprised that you find the time for a hobby like this, Severus," he mused. "All my adult students are either professional musicians or retirees."

"And since your daughter has so perceptively ruled me out of the former category, you're wondering how I could possibly belong in the latter?" Severus suggested obligingly.

David chuckled. "Well, what do you do for a living, then?"

Kyra's heartrate picked up alarmingly. What _did_ her brother do for a living? Or what had he done, before that succession of mistakes had left him with a broken hand and not even a roof over his head? Wizards couldn't conjure money from thin air whenever they needed it. Their childhood would have been very different if their mother had had that ability. But whatever he had been doing to pay his way, it couldn't make sense to an outsider. And what on earth had they been thinking, to allow the conversation to veer into that territory at all?

"I do research," Severus answered David's question, and took a sip of his wine. "You know - laboratories and libraries."

"Wow," said Sarah, fidgeting excitedly in her seat. "Like chemistry? That's totally my favourite subject at school! We're doing acids and bases at the moment. You must know all about acids and bases."

"Broadly speaking, yes," Severus confirmed. "But I mostly work with natural ingredients."

Kyra froze. Did her brother even realise how close to the wind he was sailing? She tried to swallow her mouthful of quiche, but it wouldn't go down. Maybe she could fake a choking fit, or a cough attack -

"Now that's interesting," she heard her husband's voice, mellow, polite and infallibly headed for disaster. "In what field exactly? Are we talking about complementary medicine, or - "

"Compli-what?" Sarah interrupted.

"It means making medicine out of plants and minerals and such," David explained.

Sarah knit her brows. "Does that even work?"

"Extremely well," Severus assured her. "I dare say the results would stun you."

He gave Kyra a fleeting glance then, but his expression was unreadable. Was he actually _enjoying_ this? The idea filled Kyra with dread - but it was nothing compared to the horror that seized her when Sarah spoke up again.

"So you're like some sort of herb witch?" Sarah asked, grinning from ear to ear. "With a pointy hat? Stirring frogspawn into a bubbling cauldron?" She started giggling with delight at her own joke.

"Rarely," Severus dismissed the suggestion without batting an eyelid. "Frogspawn is overrated. Hard to come by fresh in December, too."

Laughter rang out from both ends of the table. David had looked slightly apprehensive at his daughter's audacity at first, but when their guest seemed to take no offence, he happily joined in Sarah's merriment. Nobody seemed to notice that Kyra sat there as still as a statue. The hand she had clenched around her glass was turning white.

"Oh, I love it!" Sarah wheezed, shaking with laughter. "Can you fly on a broom, too?"

"Not my favourite means of transportation, but yes, of course I can."

This threw both Sarah and David into a new fit of the giggles - and Kyra snapped. The glass slipped from her hand and clattered onto her half-empty plate, soaking everything on it.

"STOP IT!"

The shout reverberated shrilly around the kitchen. In the shocked silence that followed, David and Sarah both stared at Kyra with their mouths open. Severus was the first to find his voice.

"I'll take care of that," he offered, leaning across the table to relieve Kyra of the mess that had been her dinner.

A fresh wave of panic crashed over her. Did she imagine it, or was his other hand moving towards the inside pocket of his jacket?

"DON'T YOU DARE!" she yelled at him so savagely that he blinked. "PUT IT AWAY!"

"Kyra, what -" David began, utterly perplexed.

Tears clouded Kyra's sight. She hid her face in her hands and fled from the room.

* * *

Her brother caught up with her in the hall, at the foot of the stairs. She was shaking all over, and she wanted nothing more than to run up to the bedroom and slam the door shut against the world.

"Kyra, wait!"

"No! Leave me alone!"

"Listen to me!"

"You told them! God, how could you _tell_ them?"

"_Kyra!_ Are you a Squib, or are you an idiot?"

It was his anger that got through to her, more so than the words. There was a glint in his dark eyes that frightened her, but she couldn't look away. He lowered his voice then, mindful that there was only a door between them and the rest of the family, but his tone lost none of its urgency. "Use your brains, for heaven's sake! I didn't tell them _anything! _Why do you think they were laughing? Another minute or two, and we'd all have moved on, no harm done!"

"Oh, so now it's my fault?"

"You're the one who decided to build your marriage on a lie. If you can't handle the consequences -"

Kyra let out a noise that she didn't even know she was capable of making. It sounded like an angry reptile. "That wasn't me!" she snarled. "That was the stupid Ministry! Did you know they give people like me a list of lies to choose from when we want out? So we can make excuses why we're out of touch with our families? I never needed that. Nobody ever questions why I left Spinner's End, even without any extra lies on top. Do you think that makes me feel lucky?"

"Well, I can certainly tell you're no expert." His voice had turned cold and sneering.

"And you are?" she shot back. "Is that something to be proud of, being an expert liar?"

There was that flash of anger in his eyes again. "You learn that very quickly when your life depends on it!" he hissed. "It's not a matter of pride, it's a necessity!"

"And in what awful world do people have to lie to stay alive?"

It struck her as soon as the words were out how dead serious he had sounded. What she had taken for a cynical joke might just as well be true.

"And you couldn't even trust me to see us through one Muggle dinner," Severus said after a moment in a horribly flat voice. "Well, good luck sorting that mess out. Next time, first think and then shout, not the other way round." He was at the door when he turned back one more time. "I wonder why you even bothered to answer Dumbledore's letter."

He hadn't expected an answer, and the front door closed behind him a moment later.

"Because I know what it's like to be let down!" Kyra shouted after him furiously. "And I couldn't bring myself to do it!"

* * *

David found her sitting on the lower steps of the stairs, her head in her hands, crying quietly. He sat down next to her and pulled her into his arms. She leaned against him, glad of his solid, warm presence.

"Kyra?" he asked gently after a moment. "What's a Squib?"

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Never mind," she said wearily. "It's just - local dialect, you know. For someone who makes a big fuss about nothing."

* * *

TBC


	12. Chapter 12

**Severus **

Severus spent the weekend waiting for a message to the effect that he was no longer welcome in Kyra's house.

He found it difficult to understand her approach to the issue of magic. It was inconsistent, to say the least. She wanted everyone around her kept in the dark about it, as the Ministry expected of her; but when it really mattered, she was both a poor and an unwilling liar. In order to keep her secret, she relied heavily on the lack of curiosity and on the gullibility of her Muggle family; but she got upset when she saw both utilised to the full. She lived constantly on the edge of discovery and hence of disaster; but she lost her nerve as soon as she was reminded of it.

Then again, she had never asked to be put into such an impossible position. None of her kind ever had. Severus was beginning to see why most Squibs decided to stay in the world they grew up in, even if it condemned them to a pitiable existence. And even the ones who lived among Muggles rarely embraced that life fully, and often remained oddballs and outsiders. The path of total denial that Kyra had taken might well be the hardest of them all, and nothing and no one had equipped her with the tools to make that journey a little easier.

He wondered why it had taken him so long to acknowledge this. He should know a thing or two by now about falling between the cracks, about being neither fish nor fowl, and about the toll it took to pretend to be either for any length of time. In his own manner, he was in an equally impossible situation, obliged to serve and satisfy two masters, his allegiance and his loyalty split in two like the tongue of a serpent. Even with the most rigorous training, the human brain did not have endless capacities to accommodate several separate variants of oneself. The strain was enormous. It was enough to make anyone crack sooner or later. And that was ugly to witness – weakness was an ugly thing, in anyone – but it should not have surprised him.

Saturday and Sunday came and went, and there was still no message from Kyra.

* * *

On Monday, in spite of all his precautions, Severus ran into Avery.

Severus was on his way back down from lunch in the tea room of St. Mungo's and had just reached the fourth floor landing when his old classmate stepped out of the Spell Damage ward. They spotted each other at the same moment and both froze, as if each expected the other to draw his wand and attack. Then the double doors of the ward opened again, and a kind-faced Healer in the hospital's lime green uniform emerged, holding a slip of parchment in her hand.

"Mr Avery – you forgot! The date for your next appointment!" Looking relieved to find her patient still there, she pressed the note into Avery's hand, smiled vaguely at Severus and disappeared again.

For a split second, none of this made any sense – and then it did, and it was so pathetic that it nearly made Severus laugh out loud.

"Get away from me," Avery snarled.

Severus slipped into his role with such ease, it was almost as if he had missed it. "Why? Afraid you'll have another Imperius curse put on you?"

Avery flushed an ugly red, and lowered his voice to a whisper. "How do you know -"

"Oh, please. Did you really think the Ministry would swallow that story without insisting on regular check-ups? Round-the-clock exposure to Imperius control for three years running? That's bound to have left some damage. What are you these days, Avery, an instructive case study?"

Avery's eyes darted up and down the corridor to check for eavesdroppers, but they were alone. "What kept _you_ out of Azkaban, eh?" he hissed back angrily.

Severus raised his eyebrows. "Remorse," he replied in a mock-righteous tone. "I saw the error of my ways."

Avery snorted disdainfully. "Remorse? You?"

"Well, I preferred the Ministry to see me as a decent man, rather than a weak man. But I don't blame you for choosing the easier option."

"It - they – " Avery spluttered, but then he remembered where they were and mastered himself. "Leave me alone!" he intoned in a loud voice, making his words a public statement. "I want nothing to do with you, and I don't even know what you talking about!"

Severus curled his lip at this woefully transparent manoeuvre. "Well, good luck keeping up the charade. I'm sure you've given Mulciber a good reason why you're incriminating him like that? Or is he in on this, and you've convinced the Ministry that you were actually controlling _each other?"_

"I've no idea where Mulciber is or what he's up to!" Avery was almost shouting now. "Nor do I want to know! And now get out of my way, I'm leaving!"

Avery's acting was pitiful, but Severus could believe that as far as Mulciber was concerned, he was actually telling the truth. Severus stood aside to let his former ally pass, and watched him hurry down the stairs and out of sight. As for his own position, he was confident that he had passed this first – admittedly mild – test. Now for the next one.

As he had expected, Avery was dawdling in the Muggle street outside the concealed entrance to the hospital when Severus followed him out there a minute or two later. They fell into step and walked together in silence, weaving their way through the crowd of Christmas shoppers and besuited office workers on their lunch breaks. Avery kept shooting nervous glances over his shoulder, but the traffic was so noisy that there was no chance of them being overheard.

"Sorry I shouted," Avery muttered, sounding despondent. "But I'm still being watched sometimes. It was a damn close shave. The Ministry were going to get me. I had to tell them _something_. But it's hard. The looks people give me – I don't know how you do it."

A blue car passed them, driving so close to the kerb that it splattered Avery's shoes with muddy rainwater. Avery cursed. A motorbike clattered after the car.

"Well, we all do what we can." Severus took care to drop all venom from his voice now, and injected it with sympathy instead. "When the time comes, the Dark Lord will acknowledge how useful it was for some of us to remain at large, and free to act in his name."

Avery stopped in his tracks. Predictably, he looked terrified rather than reassured. "So you think he will return?"

"Oh yes, of course. Have you ever known the Dark Lord to do things by halves?"

"Well, I -" But Severus never found out what Avery had to say about the Dark Lord's thoroughness.

A little further down the street, a strange spectacle was unfolding. The blue car that had passed them moments before had come to a screeching halt at the side of the road. The driver jumped out just as the motorcycle pulled up next to it. The car driver hopped onto the pillion seat, and the motorbike went off at top speed, abandoning the car where it stood.

It had happened in a matter of seconds, but the people closest to the event reacted immediately. A collective scream of panic rose up from the crowd, and the steady flow of the foot traffic on the pavement was rudely interrupted as people turned and started running away from the vacated car. The panic-stricken stampede clashed violently with the oncoming walkers who had not yet realised the danger. Severus saw an old man with one leg shoved to the ground, his crutches knocked from under his shoulders.

A blast, so loud that it seemed to shake the very foundations of the buildings around them, erupted from the blue car, and its body was ripped apart in a gigantic ball of fire. The shock wave swept everybody in the vicinity off their feet. Severus went down like everyone else, shielding his head from the debris that was raining down on them. He had been so close to the explosion that he had felt the heat of it pass over his face, and for a moment, he was back in the Burkes' house in Knockturn Alley, choking from the fumes of Mulciber's Fiendfyre. With an effort, he wrenched his mind back to reality. His ears were ringing, and the carpet of broken glass that littered the pavement scrunched under his hands and knees as he moved to pick himself up. He felt blood trickle down the side of his face. The blast had shattered all the windows of the surrounding houses and sent shards flying everywhere.

People were still screaming. A cacophony of mindless terror and mortal agony filled the air. Just ahead of him, a child's pushchair had been knocked sideways and crashed into a lamppost. The flimsy construction had folded in on itself under the force of the collision. A small body, its blond head adorned with pink-ribboned pigtails, was hanging out from under the torn hood like a broken doll. A shapeless form was moving towards the wreckage through the smoke, crawling on its belly like a snake, but slowly, so slowly.

Without thinking, Severus started moving as well. A hand on his arm pulled him back immediately. It was Avery, ashen-faced and covered in soot.

"Are you out of your mind?" he shouted. "They're only Muggles! Let's get out of here!" He screwed up his face in concentration, getting ready to Disapparate. At the last moment, Severus broke away.

He reached the child in the pushchair at the same time as the snake-like shape, and he realised that it was the one-legged man dragging himself along the ground. The old man was bleeding from a number of cuts, too, but his gnarled hands were already busy prising the wreckage apart.

"Get her out, there's a good lad," he wheezed. "Careful. Put her down."

Together they freed the little girl and laid her on the ground. She was alive, but with every tortured breath she drew, something rattled horribly inside her crushed ribcage. Her face was turning blue before their eyes.

The old man took her tiny hand. "I've got yer, luv," he murmured, but when his eyes met those of his companion, he shook his head. "Nothin' we can do."

"Are you sure?"

"Trust me, son, I've seen a thing or two like this in the war. They never make it."

Severus didn't even look around to check that nobody else was watching. In a trice, his wand was out and pointing at the little girl's dented ribs. "_Episkey_." It took another attempt, and even a third, but then the girl's chest expanded as air flooded back into her lungs, and a few breaths later, a rosy colour started returning to her face.

Severus turned to find the one-legged veteran staring at him with eyes that were threatening to pop out of his grizzled head.

"What the _bloody_ hell -"

"Never mind. You've been dreaming. _Obliviate." _

He had overdone the Memory Charm a bit. The old man's eyes rolled back into his head, and then he keeled right over, peacefully joining the mass of injured and unconscious bodies around them. Severus pocketed his wand, got to his feet, dusted himself down and Disapparated just as the first vehicles with blue lights and sirens swept into the ravaged street.

* * *

TBC


	13. Chapter 13

**Severus**

Back in Spinner's End, Severus shook the remaining shards of glass out of his hair, applied Essence of Dittany to the cut above his eye and then looked at his reflection in the cracked mirror over the kitchen sink for a full minute, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

Was he losing his grip? He knew, he _knew_ that routines were highly dangerous. How many opponents of the Dark Lord had lost their lives because they had allowed themselves to be predictable? Had he now made the same mistake and handed himself to his enemies on a silver platter, like a damn fool?

Had the Fates been laughing at him again, to take him so close to being torn to shreds only to spare him after all? Or had they been trying to tempt him? Had this been a tantalising reminder that there was always a way to put a quick end to the arduous labour of recovery? No matter – if he went down that road after all, it would be on his own terms.

He turned his mind to practical considerations. If this had really been meant for him, or for Avery, then this was the end of his regular visits to St. Mungo's. And what was more, Thursday afternoons at Kyra's would now definitely be over as well, if they weren't already. He couldn't make a habit of letting the innocent pay the price for his thoughtlessness.

He flexed his fingers thoughtfully. From a purely technical point of view, the idea of not going back to Birmingham was acceptable. From every other point of view, it was despicable. He and Kyra had not parted as friends. He was developing a habit of doing that to people, too. He wondered why it kept happening; he should have learned by now that you didn't always get another chance to put things right.

It was at this point that he realised the massive flaw in his reasoning, and it pulverised his conclusions like a well-aimed Reductor curse.

Whoever had been the target of that attack, it wasn't him.

There was no way anyone could have known that he would leave St. Mungo's at that particular moment. If he hadn't met Avery, he would have stayed for another couple of hours. And Avery himself could not have been in on the plot either. As lethal weapons went, explosions were rather unspecific after all. If Avery had been a decoy, he would have been required to walk open-eyed towards his own violent death, and even Avery was not stupid enough to do that.

Besides, in spite of the Dark Lord's love of big and dramatic eruptions of violence, no Death Eater worth their salt would have bothered with Muggle technology and Muggle vehicles in order to take out one or two of their own.

The lack of a Dark Mark in the sky was something of a giveaway, too.

* * *

The night was tricky. Nights always were. Darkness went together too well with faceless fears and nagging doubts. And those were always more difficult to wall in when they concerned someone other than himself.

But opening the _Daily Prophet_ the next morning helped. The explosion on Oxford Street dominated the headlines, and speculation was rife. A highly sensationalist report quoted an 'unnamed source within the Auror office', who Severus thought smacked a lot of Alastor Moody, claiming that supporters of He Who Must Not Be Named were still running amok in the community and targeting wizarding institutions. Another commentator even went so far as to conjecture that He Who Must Not Be Named himself was not dead and gone at all, but as fresh as a daisy and eager to carry on. The Ministry would hardly have allowed the _Prophet_ to print any of this if it were true.

But the Ministry took its time intervening. It was only on the second day after the attack that the _Prophet_ carried an official full-page announcement. It declared that the cause of the explosion had indeed been a car bomb planted by a group of militant Muggle activists, blaming it on the political unrest in Northern Ireland. According to an investigation conducted by the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, the proximity of the scene of the attack to St. Mungo's hospital was pure coincidence. An interview with the director of St. Mungo's detailed that the protective spells securing the hospital building had not been broken, and could not have been broken even if the bomb had been placed directly in front of it. Muggle engineers were puzzled as to why the windows of the long-closed Purge & Dowse department store, of all places, had withstood the shock wave, but the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee was already working on a believable explanation.

The one piece of information that the Ministry did not debunk was the death toll. The _Prophet_ had reported six fatalities, along with dozens injured, all of them Muggles. But Muggles being Muggles, there were no further details.

The third day after the attack - Thursday - dawned with Severus still in two minds whether it was wise to return to Birmingham today, or ever. But once again the _Daily Prophet_ solved the problem for him. The Oxford Street bombing was already old news, but the Auror office made another momentous announcement that day. Mulciber's scope of action had just been reduced to staring at the walls of a prison cell in Azkaban for the rest of his life.

Far from masterminding bomb plots to exact revenge on his turncoat comrades, it transpired, Mulciber had simply gone to ground in the lodgings of one of the girls that hung around Knockturn Alley after nightfall. And the girl, sorely tempted by the thousand galleon price that the Ministry had put on the head of any Death Eater still at large, had turned him in. Knowing Mulciber's reputation in that particular department, the reward had probably been no more than an adequate compensation for the demands he had made on the girl. Severus could not bring himself to think badly of her.

He went to get his coat, the cello and the music books, and set out.

* * *

When he rang the bell, he was fully prepared for Kyra to shut the door right in his face. She didn't, but that was probably just because she was on the telephone when she opened to him. She beckoned him in wordlessly, and he went through into the sitting room while she concluded her conversation with her unseen counterpart. From the snatches that he couldn't help overhearing, it appeared to be a luthier commissioned with a repair of some sort.

When he put his cello case down, his eyes fell on the day's newspaper that lay on the coffee table. This one was a Muggle paper, of course, but the picture on the front page was familiar. There was the glass-strewn pavement. There was the lamppost that had acted as a near-fatal obstacle to the little girl in the pushchair. There was also an ambulance parked in the road, and uniformed paramedics attending to the injured. The picture must have been taken moments after he had left.

He turned the folded paper over to read the article - 'Miracle on Oxford Street', the headline blared - when Kyra walked in.

"Sorry about that", she greeted him, gesturing back into the hall where the telephone stood. "I needed a word with the luthier. The wolf tone on my cello has got really bad over the past week. Not sure why."

"The - sorry, what?"

"The wolf tone. The frequency of that tone is too close to the natural resonating frequency of the body of the instrument itself. It's like the note you play pokes the cello in a soft spot. That hurts, so it protests, and it can get worse over time. It causes an interference that sounds like an angry growl. Hence the name."

"Is that true?"

"Of course. It's physics."

It was also human nature, and the parallel was startling. Severus couldn't tell whether this had occurred to her, too, but he wasn't going to be the one who pointed it out.

"That's such sad news," Kyra abruptly changed the subject, nodding at the newspaper he still held in his hand. "Have you read it? There's this little girl who was caught up in that dreadful bomb attack down in London the other day. She was right in the middle of it, but she escaped with barely a scratch on her. Nobody understands why. A D-day veteran is being hailed as a hero for shielding her with his own body. They were found next to each other. But the man has no memory of the incident at all. Anyway, it's still a sad story, because the girl lived with her mum and her grandma, and they both died in the bombing. So she's got nowhere to go now."

Severus let the paper sink down, mostly to hide the fact that it had started trembling in his hand.

When would he stop trying to get this right?

"Well, never mind the Muggles and their problems." Kyra's falsely upbeat tone was jarring. "Shall we play?"

They settled down to tune, but his mind was far away, and it showed.

"Oh, give it here," Kyra snapped impatiently, and set to restoring the strings of the poor harassed instrument to their proper pitch three times faster than he could have done even if he had been able to concentrate. He sat there and watched, feeling utterly useless.

"Kyra?"

Her eyes were on the tuning peg for the C string. "Mmh?"

"Can you fix a wolf tone?"

"Oh yes." With a final plaintive wail, the C string settled just where it should. "But it involves alterations inside the body of the cello itself. That's risky. A bit like open heart surgery."

She gave him a quizzical look, and he knew that she was definitely not talking physics this time. Well, serve him right. He had poked her in a soft spot the week before; she was entitled to give him angry growls.

Figuratively speaking, she did just that. She had decided that it was time they started playing Bach, which was insanely ambitious even though they confined themselves to the easiest pieces. But Severus was quite drawn to the rigorous, well-ordered, geometrical beauty of that music, and he suspected that Kyra had known that. Today, however, she merely chased him through the same piece again and again until his left hand seized up as it hadn't done since their early days, and he had to beg for quarter.

Kyra sat leaning on her instrument while he flexed and shook out his hand.

"Oh, by the way," she said suddenly, "it's Christmas Eve next Thursday. Christmas?" she repeated, seemingly amused at his lack of a reaction. "You know - peace on earth, goodwill to men, holly, tinsel and too much food?"

"I know what Christmas is, Kyra."

There was one good Christmas that he remembered, after all. It had been the year their father had got laid off at the mill. Their aunt Theresa, in an attempt to cheer up her brother's family, and probably also to make sure there was a decent meal on the table, had invited them over to her place. She had got out her cello after dinner and played carols on it, while her niece and nephew sat side by side on the hearth rug, enthralled by what they were hearing. That hour or so had felt taken out of time, otherworldly, unreal – or it would have been unreal, if Theresa hadn't allowed Kyra to take the cello with her when they went back home on Boxing Day. It had never been silent again for a day afterwards.

"I understand, of course," he said aloud. "We'll skip that day then. You'll want to -"

"I'd actually like you to come."

He must have looked so alarmed at the suggestion that she laughed.

"Oh, don't worry. David is touring over the holidays. Sarah will be in Paris with her mum. I just meant, come over and we can play as usual. No tinsel, I promise."

* * *

TBC


	14. Chapter 14

**Severus**

He had started the week by nearly getting blown up in a Muggle car bombing. It had ended with a Christmas invitation. For someone who had felt permanently disconnected from life ever since Halloween, these were certainly interesting times.

As far as the invitation was concerned, Severus decided to take Kyra at her word and assume there would be no necessity to put on a false air of festive cheer. As for peace on earth and goodwill to men, that was preposterous to ask for at any time of the year.

All the same, he was relieved when he entered her house on the day itself. Kyra had indeed dispensed with almost all the usual trappings of the season. The kitchen door stood open, but there was no whiff of a lavish feast on the air. The decorations were few, simple and probably mostly there for the sake of the child, who would expect some. No tree.

Kyra had also been serious about making music as usual. She set a less punishing pace this time, but other than that, they stuck to their routine. When they had played for their appointed hour, however, Kyra made no move to pack up.

"Would you have done it?" she asked without preamble as soon as the last note had faded away.

Severus leant back in his chair. "Done what?" He honestly didn't know what she meant.

"Back at our dinner. If they'd started suspecting anything – would you have gone and just –"

"- modified their memories?" he guessed.

She nodded, looking apprehensive.

The correct answer to that was yes. The Statute of Secrecy required it, and the circumstances – a limited number of witnesses in a limited space – would have made it a very simple exercise. But the correct answer was obviously not what Kyra wanted to hear.

"Only as a last resort," he said evasively. Even so, disappointment was written all over her face. "Oh, come on. You know that I'd be lying if I said no."

"Well, you said you were good at lying," she retorted, sounding hurt.

"Doesn't mean I enjoy it."

There was a pause. "I – " Kyra began, and then broke off again.

"Are you the one who wants to be lied to now?" If she insisted on harping on about this, they might as well get it over with for the day. "I know that magic scares you to death. But what do you expect me to do about that? I'm the villain of your story, aren't I? So why are you looking to me for reassurance now?" He hadn't meant to sound quite so disdainful, but he'd rather see her angry than in tears again. It worked.

"My story, is it?" Kyra flared up instantly. "So you're saying it's not true?"

"What, that it was us who drove you away, our mother and I? That we frightened you off, because you were different? Because you weren't one of us?"

"Severus, when I turned eleven, and that letter never came -"

"She did care about you," he objected at once, surprising himself by how much it mattered to put this right.

"Not that I noticed."

"She _cried_, Kyra. Night after night."

Even among his extensive collection of unhappy childhood memories, this one was especially unpleasant to recall. He could almost feel his small, cold bare feet against the floorboards again, and his ear pressed to the door of their parents' bedroom, as unable to ignore their mother's distress as he had been to ease it.

Brother and sister looked at each other for a moment.

"Yes, that's all she ever did, wasn't it?" Kyra snapped then, as implacable as before. "Sit around and bewail her lot. To you, at any rate, to her little prince. Not to me. I was never good enough for her. I was just a liability. An accident. You do know that they only got married because they'd had me, don't you? How do you think that makes me feel?"

"How is that your fault? You know how it was back then. What choice did they have?"

"And what choice did I have, except to get the hell out? I knew that no saviour would ever come and rescue me if I just sat hiding in the coal shed waiting for a miracle. Not to mention that yes, I _was_ frightened of what witches and wizards are capable of doing, too. And I was right, wasn't I?"

"What do you mean?"

"Look in the mirror."

"Not something I'm fond of doing."

"Maybe you should. Shall I tell you what you'd see?"

Severus shrugged.

"You'd see," Kyra said bluntly, "my little brother grown into an old man in the course of little more than fourteen years, a shadow of his former self, skin and bone and nervous eyes darting all over the place like everyone's out to get you. You look like a ghost, Severus, you look ill and haunted and yes, I have no idea how that happened. All I know is that I left and you stayed, and this is the result. But how am I supposed to ever understand this if you don't _tell_ me?"

There was a long silence. Then Severus carefully lowered his cello to the floor, placed the bow on top of it, and got up from his chair. He walked past the sofa to the window and looked out into the wintry garden. The gathering dusk was turning the trees and shrubs into shadowy outlines. Nothing moved.

"The music from your concert -" he said at length.

"What about it?"

"Can you play that?"

"Now?"

"Yes."

If Kyra was surprised at the request, she didn't let it show. She gave him a searching look, but then she raised her bow, closed her eyes for a moment to concentrate, and began to play. Her fingers picked their way along the board as if of their own accord, while the bow in her right hand plucked note after resounding note of the cello concerto from the vibrating strings.

Severus retraced his steps and sat down on the floor with his back against the sofa, silently, careful not to disturb her. He could feel the floorboards under the carpet reverberate with Kyra's playing.

It was startlingly different from what he had seen in their lessons so far. It was bursting with energy, fierce enough to edge every single note into the very walls of the room they were in. There was something almost selfish about it, too, that made the music deeply about herself and nothing and no one else. And it made her radiate a power that, even knowing that her world recognised her as a gifted artist, he would never have guessed she possessed.

He was back in their old bedroom in Spinner's End, watching and listening from his corner while she lost herself in her music, and yet he was not. The two children from back then may have carried the seeds inside them already, but it had taken all the years in between for the pain to come into full bloom. And Kyra had found a language to tell that story in. Maybe it was time he did, too.

Memory supplied the absent orchestra as Kyra travelled from the lowest to the highest regions of the instrument's voice, carried along as if by an invisible wave, higher and higher, climbing towards that one piercing note that marked the summit, quivered for a moment, and then died away.

And into the silence, Severus began to speak.

* * *

**Kyra**

Night had fallen, but neither of them thought of turning on the lights. Kyra had put her cello down, but she had not left her chair nor said a single word for hours. As the light had faded and the trees outside the window had merged with the night sky, her brother's deep and even voice had taken her on a journey that began on the day she had left Spinner's End. Like the night outside the window, his tale had grown steadily darker, and by the time they had reached Halloween of this year, it had become a nightmare worse than any Kyra had ever had while asleep. He had spared neither her nor himself a single detail, but his voice had never wavered except once.

And then Severus had ceased speaking altogether, and there was silence between them for a long time.

The chasm that separated them, that had always separated them, was still there. But it was as if his words had built a bridge across it, bringing them close enough, for the first time, to touch. It was a fragile structure, since it existed only in the mind, but Kyra felt sure that this was the time to test if it would carry both their weight.

"So you were the one who found a saviour," she said quietly. She could barely make out his face in the dark. "But then you lost her again."

"Yes," he said. "Twice."

The bridge held; it had not crumbled under the weight of what her brother had told her he had done, nor under the burden he carried now.

"I -" she said, then cleared her throat, tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and tried again. "I don't know what to say. It's Christmas, and I'm sitting here with a self-confessed… terrorist, I suppose? Who also happens to be my brother. I'm having a bit of a hard time reconciling all that."

"I'm not asking you to."

"But I'd like to," she insisted. "Because he's also some sort of guardian angel, and that makes him about as strange as they come."

"You sound like an expert," he said sardonically. "How many guardian angels have you met in your life?"

"Oh, several," Kyra replied truthfully. "Theresa, who took me in and paid for my first proper music lessons… Simon, who gives us all wings... David, of course… Looking back, I found the right one at every turn, or they found me, I don't know."

"Lucky you. Imagine you'd have got a lousy one like me."

Kyra did not have an answer to that.

"What will you do now?" she asked after a moment.

"Now?" he said, and she could tell that he was misunderstanding her deliberately. "Now I'd better be off. It's late."

"No, wait. Don't go. Please." A chill had passed over her, and Kyra was sure that it had little to do with the late hour or the dinner they hadn't had. "I don't want to be alone in the house tonight."

* * *

TBC

* * *

**Author's Note:** If you want to listen to the music Kyra plays in this chapter, search for Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto on YouTube. Jacqueline du Pré's version is a total classic. I'm very fond of Sol Gabetta's, too.


	15. Chapter 15

**Kyra**

Kyra dreamed, more vividly than ever.

An army of men and women in long black cloaks, hooded and masked, marched through the landscape of her sleeping mind, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake, sowing terror and reaping blood. The cries of the dying echoed in her ears, and the pleading of the tortured, and the mindless gibbering of those who had their free will taken from them. She clearly saw the red-haired girl, too, sprawled on the floor of a nursery where a little baby boy sat in his cot, crying for his dead mother. A thin, high-pitched voice uttered words she did not understand, and a white, flat face took shape in Kyra's mind's eye, with flaming red eyes and slits for nostrils, like a snake...

Kyra woke with a start. A piercing stab of pain flashed through her head, forked and then settled right behind both eyes, throbbing so furiously that they watered. The morning light in the room seemed unbearably bright. But if she closed her eyes again, the dark visions might come back.

Trying to ignore the ache, she got to her feet and went to the window to peek through the curtains. Outside, the world was covered in snow. It lay on the lawn behind the house like a blanket, and the branches of the trees in the garden were coated in a fine powdery layer of glittering white dust. Everything was frozen into stillness, and so, for a moment, was she.

The sun had come out by the time she had dressed, put on an extra cardigan for warmth, brushed her rich dark hair and tiptoed downstairs. The door of the sitting room, where her brother had fallen asleep on the sofa the night before, was closed.

She went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Waiting for the water to boil, she stood by the back door and looked out into the garden again, much like she had done on the day the owl had brought her Albus Dumbledore's letter. It seemed much longer ago than six weeks.

She sensed rather than heard her brother appearing in the kitchen doorway.

"I love how the snow transforms everything," she said, her eyes still on the beautiful winter scene outside. "It muffles every noise and softens all the sharp edges."

"It does," Severus agreed quietly.

She turned around. "Good morning." It seemed absurd to wish each other a Happy Christmas, so Kyra left it at that. "Would you like a coffee? I'm making a particularly strong one. I'm absolutely knackered, I'm afraid. I woke with a splitting headache that just won't go away."

"Coffee?" he said, not sounding impressed at all. His eyes went around the room and settled on the large teapot on its shelf above the sink. He pointed. "Can I borrow that?"

Kyra wondered whether she had made a gaffe, offering coffee to a passionate tea drinker. "Yeah, sure."

He walked over and took the teapot down, then sorted through the caddies on the shelf until he found what he had been looking for. "Do you happen to have a supply of pomegranate, aniseed, lemons, ginger, dragonwort, kelpieleaf and salamander blood?" he asked over his shoulder, rattling the list off so quickly that Kyra's aching head started spinning. "And a splash of milk?"

"Hang on, hang on – milk, of course. In the fridge. Lemons, yes. Pomegranate, too." Both were in the fruit bowl on the table. "Aniseed, in the cupboard over there, I think. But I've never heard of dragonwort, nor of that leaf thing, and I think you must be joking about the salamander blood. What's all this about, anyway?"

Her brother gave her a reproving look. "Trust me, you want something better than a coffee. Right. Scales, please, a cutting board, the sharpest knife you own, a ladle and a teaspoon."

Bemused, Kyra went to collect the required equipment from the cupboards and drawers. When she returned with them, the teapot sat in the kitchen sink, and tiny bluish flames were crackling merrily beneath it.

Her eyebrows rose into her hair. "Are you _serious?"_

"Don't worry, I've made the pot unbreakable, and the fire's not going to spread. Now, the basis is an infusion of peppermint, and we'll need the lemons next, so you can juice one now. And when you've done that, you can start peeling the ginger." He eyed the kitchen scales that Kyra had got out for him with suspicion. "You don't have anything more precise than these, do you?"

Kyra was tempted to point out that this set had always been good enough for everyone's birthday cakes, but she understood what he meant when she saw him measure out the powdered aniseed a moment later, holding the little glass jar and a teaspoon up to his eyes as if one grain more or less mattered. Then again, it probably did. She also noticed how perfectly in control of his hands he was. No more trembling. No more cramps.

"Lemon juice?" she offered a minute or two later, having squeezed out one half of the fruit.

Severus nodded. "Put it in. Three spoonfuls. Stir - well, just stir to keep everything smoothly mixed."

"Teaspoons, too?" Kyra asked, thinking of the astounding precision with which her brother had just handled the aniseed.

"Good thinking. Any spoon, as long as you fill it three times."

With some hesitation, Kyra began to stir the lemon juice in as instructed. The ladle had taken some of the warmth of the liquid in the pot, but it wasn't hot to the touch as she had feared. The scent that rose from the pot wasn't unpleasant either.

Meanwhile, her brother had started peeling the ginger root.

"Do you want a grater for that?" Kyra asked.

"No. The pieces have to be of exactly the same size."

And she could have sworn that the pieces he now started slicing off were, indeed, within a fraction of an inch of one another. He weighed each in his hand, discarded some according to a pattern that Kyra could not make out, then tipped the rest into the scales and nodded to himself in satisfaction.

Kyra was watching, there was no other word for it, a work of art unfold before her eyes.

"That's beautiful," she said admiringly when he had moved on to the pomegranate. "I just cut them in half and make a mess." A series of careful incisions into the crumpled brown skin, a gentle prising motion with both hands, and the fruit had come apart with each and every one of the red gem-like seeds still intact.

"You're making a mess there, too," Severus said, jerking his chin at the teapot, which Kyra had been unaware she had neglected.

"Oh, sorry." The brew in the teapot had turned cloudy, but it cleared after a few more stirs, and the pleasant scent of lemon and peppermint tickled her nose again. Her brother came over and tipped the ginger pieces and a small heap of pomegranate seeds into the pot.

"We can leave that to simmer for twenty minutes now," he said. "Go and get your coat."

"What for?"

"For the dragonwort and the kelpieleaf," Severus replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "The salamander blood is dispensable, but those really aren't."

"I told you, I don't even know what they are, much less where to get them."

"But I do."

* * *

"So where are we going?" Kyra asked when they were putting their coats on in the hall a moment later.

"No further than is safe," Severus replied cryptically, and to her surprise he held out his hand to her. "Now, hold fast. Whatever you do, don't let go."

Bewildered, Kyra grasped her brother's hand – and was instantly pulled into darkness. It pressed in on her nauseatingly from all sides. Gasping for breath, she clung tight for dear life until the darkness lifted again and a dazzling bright light took its place.

She landed, stumbling, on a patch of snowy ground and realised that it was the sunlight, reflected off the white surface, that had blinded her for a moment. Her brother had landed beside her, her hand still in his, but he let go as soon as she had regained her footing.

Kyra straightened up. "Was that -?"

"Apparition, yes."

"I don't think I like it."

"Never mind, nobody does."

Kyra resisted the urge to check that she was still all in one piece. She felt just fine, if a little winded. She also resisted the urge to chide her brother for not warning her. They both knew she would never have assented.

"Where are we?" She looked around the large, beautifully landscaped garden they were in, and immediately answered her own question. "It's the Botanical Gardens!"

Out here, the lawns and low hedges had received a white icing overnight, too, as had the bare branches of the trees on the perimeter of the grounds. But the magnificent glass domes of the greenhouses and the skyline of the city in the distance were unmistakable.

"Aren't they closed for Christmas though?" Kyra asked when she realised that they were completely alone.

"Yes. Convenient, isn't it? Muggles tend to get a bit upset if you pop up out of thin air right under their noses. No idea why."

Kyra felt a silly urge to giggle, but her brother was already moving towards a small walled enclosure nearby. She followed.

Inside the little herb garden, Severus crouched down and brushed the snow off a patch of ground close to the back wall, revealing a small brownish plant. It looking stringy, bedraggled and barely alive. "Kelpieleaf," he said and picked a few tendrils. "Just a few of these will do. Here, take them."

Kyra received them, and they curled up in her palm as if they were glad of its warmth. "What - ?"

She looked back at her brother, and gave a start when she saw, for the first time ever, a wand in his hand. He was drawing circles in the air above the kelpieleaf patch, spiralling outward. Thick, gentle flakes of snow fell from the tip of the wand, slowly covering the plant up until it had disappeared from view.

Kyra watched in fascination. "Are you worried that people will see we were here?" she asked in barely more than a whisper.

"No." Severus straightened up and pocketed the wand. "But this is a rare herb, and if we leave it uncovered, it could die from the frost."

They found a knee-high shrub of dragonwort in the centre of the enclosure. No surprises there – the sign the gardeners had put up said 'tarragon', and Kyra could have offered her brother the dried variety from her own kitchen cupboard, if she had known they were the same.

"Shall we go back then?" Severus asked as soon as they had helped themselves to a handful of its sodden leaves.

"Can we stay for a moment? I'd quite forgotten how beautiful it is here. Didn't you say we have twenty minutes?" She waited for his trademark shrug of agreement, and Severus obliged.

When Kyra had looked her fill at the wintry idyll around them and felt her feet getting cold, she turned back to him. "There's something I'd like you to know."

Her brother made a gesture with his hand, inviting her to go on.

"You're not the villain of my story." She poked at the snowy ground with the point of her shoe. "Do you want to know the real reason why I left?"

He said nothing.

"When you were little... do you remember that you could make him hurt in return?" There was no need to clarify whom she was talking about. "When he was mean to you, or when you knew he'd been mean to our mother, he'd always catch his hand in a drawer, or burn himself with the tea kettle, or have something drop on his head. It drove him mad, but I think he knew deep down that he couldn't thrash it out of you."

"Didn't stop him trying." Her brother's voice was brittle.

"I know, Severus."

"I had to learn to control it before I even knew I was doing it."

"I know. I'm not making excuses. But that was the difference between you and me. You had a defence, at least of sorts, even if it got you in trouble every time. I had none at all. So when I didn't get the letter, and he was sure that I would never be able to retaliate, that he would never be held to account -"

She realised she was in danger of crushing their harvest in her fist. It took an effort to command her fingers to unclench.

"- that's when he started looking at me in a way he'd never looked at me before. And it was not a good way at all. I could tell that much, even at eleven. That's when I knew that I had to get out."

Her brother pulled in a sharp breath of air.

"You were a little boy, Severus. Magical or not, there was nothing you could have done."

They looked at each other. Even in the sunlight, her brother's eyes were almost black.

"I've never told anyone," Kyra went on after a moment. "Not even Theresa, though she may have guessed. And it doesn't matter any more – I did get out before he could do more than look, and that was that. I just thought you should know. And besides," she added, thinking of the wreck in the wheelchair at her mother's funeral, "I'm not sure that I see even him as a villain any more. Maybe, in the end, he was just a poor devil who had no other way of dealing with his own pain than lashing out."

"Now you are making excuses."

"Maybe. We'd never get anywhere if we didn't, sometimes."

In the distance, a bell struck the half hour. Kyra had lost track of time, but it was a welcome reminder.

"So," she said briskly, "do we have to go back the same way we came now?"

"If you don't want your Strengthening Solution to spoil while we walk across half the city, then yes," her brother agreed.

"I pity my poor old cello," Kyra said with a sigh, but it was she who held out her hand this time. "Off we go."

* * *

TBC


	16. Chapter 16

**Severus**

Back in the comfortable warmth of the McAllister kitchen, Kyra turned on the oven for the apple crumble that she had meant for last night's dessert. It would serve as a late breakfast now.

Severus checked on the potion. It felt almost natural this time to take out his wand again to relight the flames under the teapot. He left it lying on the edge of the sink when he picked up the ladle. Kyra gave it a mere fleeting glance when she came over with the little bundle of kelpieleaf and dragonwort.

The dragonwort went into the pot first. The very bright green colour the Solution instantly turned into told him that it was more potent than he had expected at this time of the year. He used only half of what they had picked. In this conjunction, too much of it made most people loose-tongued and light-headed.

It was the kelpieleaf, at any rate, that he was really looking forward to. Even in its rather sapless winter version, it behaved beautifully. The tendrils wriggled comfortably when they were dropped into the hot liquid, then spread out for a few laps of honour around the pot before finally diving to the bottom, out of sight. Kyra didn't disappoint. She looked delighted.

"That's it," Severus announced. "When the leaf goes down, it's ready."

"So we drink it now?"

"Yes. This one doesn't need to mature like most other Strengthening Solutions. It's the simplest and quickest one there is."

"Simplest and quickest?" Kyra glanced at the clock on the wall. All in all, they had been at it for nearly an hour.

Severus shrugged. "Try it, and then tell me if you'd rather have a Muggle coffee." He lifted the pot out of the sink, extinguished the flames with his wand and carried the potion over to the table. "And we'll also need the milk now, please."

"Whole, semi-skimmed or skimmed?" Kyra asked, opening the fridge.

"Unicorn, ideally. But that's even harder to get hold of than fresh frogspawn in December, so we'll settle for whatever the Muggle milkman has to offer."

Kyra gave him a half-amused, half-exasperated look and got a bottle out of the fridge. "How much?" she enquired, poised over the teapot.

"How much you like. It will do little more than add to the flavour."

Kyra found two mugs, and he ladled the steaming Solution into them. The milk had clouded it to a pleasant creamy-green colour.

They sat at the table, and there was an awkward moment while they both waited for the other to drink first. Kyra had been coming on in leaps and bounds all morning, but it would have been very surprising if she had truly overcome her fear of the unknown so quickly. Besides, he had told her himself last night that there had been times when anyone would have done well to think twice before touching anything he had brewed, if they valued their health and their sanity. She was brave to even consider it.

He raised his mug to her in a toast and drank.

A warm wave rolled down his throat, into the pit of his empty stomach and then back up into his head, washing along the inside of his skull and around his eyeballs with the expected, instantly clearing and invigorating effect. As Strengthening Solutions went, this one was certainly presentable, especially given the improvised Muggle equipment. It was a pity about the salamander blood, which would have raised the result to an entirely different level. But for someone who wasn't used to its startling effects, maybe it was better this way.

Seeing her brother neither drop dead nor display any other disquieting symptoms, Kyra ventured a sip of the potion, too – and then another, and another. He could read her face like an open book. Bewilderment, surprise, tentative pleasure, then wholehearted pleasure.

"Oh, this is marvellous," she said with a smile. "I can see why this is your thing. My headache is completely gone."

"Of course it is."

"You must let me have that recipe."

"You do know that would be pointless, don't you?"

"I don't care. I might try and make it just for the taste." Kyra took another sip and relished the effect before speaking again. "Do you get the feeling that we should have done this weeks ago?"

"Done what?"

"This." Kyra gestured at the teapot. "Potion-, erm, potionise?" she tried. "Potionate? What's the word?" They had definitely overdone the dragonwort. "Not to mention just talking about things, too," Kyra went on. "But the Snapes being who they are, I suppose we must be grateful we're both capable of civilised conversation at all."

Severus looked down at the perfect symmetry of the hands he had closed around his mug for warmth. "I couldn't have done this weeks ago," he said, startling himself both by the veracity of that statement and the fact that he had made it aloud. _Damn_ the dragonwort. "And we just call it 'make a potion'," he added quickly, hoping that it wasn't too late for diversionary tactics. "Underwhelming, I know."

He was saved, very prosaically, by the kitchen timer.

It was high time that they got something to eat, not only to counterbalance the effect of the dragonwort overdose. Once on the table, the apple crumble disappeared so quickly that it might have been Vanished, if it hadn't been for the crumbs on their plates.

Kyra sat drawing invisible patterns on her empty plate with her spoon for a while afterwards.

"Aren't you –" she asked at last, "- you people, I mean, witches and wizards -" She had obviously realised how ridiculous it was to keep avoiding the terms as if they were jinxed. "- I mean, if there's just as much hatred and fear and sorrow in your world as there is in mine - aren't you all constantly tempted to make yourselves feel better with a potion or a spell?"

"Only a fool would rely on that."

"Why? It seems such a simple solution."

"It's not simple at all. There are limits to what magic can create or replicate. The more complex and elusive your object, the harder it is. Making snowflakes is one thing. Making happiness is another thing entirely."

"Is it?" Kyra asked sceptically. "I thought -"

Severus pushed his wand across the table so that it lay halfway between them. "How would you make snow with this?"

Kyra leant away from it in her chair, looking rather injured. "You know I -"

Severus gave an impatient snort. "Come on, Kyra, this is logic, not magic. What do you need to make it snow?"

"Well, it needs to be wet, and it needs to be cold."

"Quite so. You need the correct amount of moisture, and the correct temperature. Very tangible things, right? There are spells to generate both. All you have to do is work out the right combination, and there's your snowflake." He jerked his chin at the wand. "But how would you make happiness with this?"

She put her head to one side, her eyes narrowed. "I think I see your point."

"It's hard to even know where to start, isn't it? Few witches and wizards are able to artificially create more than a semblance of a true emotion. And even if they are, the improvement is rarely permanent. Spells and charms especially almost all wear off within an hour. Potions can last longer, but even those won't completely delete a natural reaction. They'll just postpone it. They can get you through a specific situation, but things will catch up with you eventually, and not always at the most convenient time."

He watched while Kyra digested this. He thought he could see the exact moment when she came to the same erroneous conclusion that even magical people kept falling victim to.

"So if something really bad happens to you, the only sure way to rid yourself of that experience is -"

"- to delete the memory of the event itself?" he suggested.

Kyra nodded. "Some of those things you told me about last night... wouldn't you - I mean, wouldn't people do anything to be able to just forget?"

It was oddly touching how she had hastened to turn it into a general question.

"I thought you didn't like Memory Charms. Are you saying now that this would be a valid application?"

"Just wondering whether it would work."

"The short answer is no."

"Why not?"

"Because a Memory Charm will delete the memory of an event itself, but it won't eliminate the emotional imprint the event has left on you."

"So if you try it anyway -"

"- you'll end up with a jumble of disengaged feelings but no root cause to link them back to. That's not a healthy state of mind, and to make a habit of it would be dangerous. Imagine being angry all the time but not knowing why. Or sad, or fearful, or ashamed, for no comprehensible reason whatsoever. You'd be in perpetual mental turmoil, trying to understand the chaos inside you but failing every time. Eventually, you'd go mad."

"So with every memory you lose, you lose a part of yourself?"

"You could say that."

"So essentially, you're stuck with them."

"To put it bluntly, yes."

"And you just have to deal with them. Like any old Muggle."

"Exactly like any old Muggle."

Kyra must have waited a long time for this moment of triumph, and he would have borne her no grudge if she had savoured it to the utmost. But it didn't look like she was doing that. Instead, she seemed deep in thought, her chin cupped in her hand, her eyes on the table in front of her - on his wand, in fact, that still lay there between them. It must be starting to look like a rather useless piece of wood to her. And as far as this matter was concerned, that was precisely what it was.

She reached out and pushed the wand back towards him. "Well, I dare say you'll still need it for all sorts of other things when you go back."

There was no enquiring inflection in her voice. 'When you go back', she had said, not 'if you go back', as if it was a given, a complete certainty that left no room for hesitance or prevarication. No doubt at all, only a matter of time. And to his utter astonishment, Severus felt no impulse to put up resistance.

For weeks on end, he had waited for some earth-shattering epiphany to tell him where he was headed, if anywhere. Instead, the answer had snuck up on him gradually and taken him completely off-guard. The world had not only kept turning after Halloween. He had turned with it, step by small step, back from the brink of the precipice. And now he had spent the morning teaching a Potions lesson as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and in a truly shocking twist of irony, it didn't even seem to matter that it had been completely lost on his willing but utterly inept student.

_When you go back. _Imperceptibly, like some highly advanced multi-phased Transfiguration exercise, utter impossibility had mellowed into improbability and then morphed into possibility; and now possibility had turned into, for want of a more polished term, the only logical thing to do. It was as simple as that. There was a job waiting to be done, and he had no more excuses not to do it. The fact that Kyra seemed to have known this long before him was embarrassing, but that didn't make it less true.

The conclusion was so compelling that it physically propelled him out of his chair. He pocketed his wand and got to his feet.

"Well, thank you for the breakfast, Kyra, but I have to go now."

She looked up at him in surprise. "What? Where are you off to?"

"Spinner's End. I need to send a letter."

* * *

'Letter', although technically correct, had been an exaggeration. He wrote all of two words.

_I'm ready._

The owl returned that same night, carrying a reply that was almost as brief and equally to the point.

_Show me. New Year's Eve._

* * *

TBC


	17. Chapter 17

**Severus**

In the afternoon of New Year's Eve, with several hours of daylight still to go, Severus did something that he had avoided like the plague ever since he had returned to Spinner's End. He went outside.

He still knew the town like the back of his hand. His long, solitary childhood excursions had led him down every alley and every byway, and he wandered around them again for a while. Little had changed in the years he'd been away, except maybe to add another layer of dreariness to the place. The mill had finally closed down for good. There were pitiful remnants of banners protesting against the fact still fluttering from the chainlink fence around the compound. There weren't many people out and about. Few acknowledged him at all; none appeared to recognise him.

_She_ was everywhere. When he entered the nicer part of town that she had called home, she was in the whispering of the wind and in the very air he breathed.

He walked past the playground she had used to frequent with her sister, and where he had first seen, to his infinite delight and excitement, the signs that marked her as a magical person. Down in the small thicket of trees by the river that had been their secret meeting place, he halted. In spite of the cold, he sat cross-legged on the ground just like they had used to, and conversed with her for a long time.

He asked for her forgiveness, not for what he had done to her - never, _never_ that - but for what he had considered doing to himself. She had been given a choice, and she had not taken the easy way out. He felt ashamed that he had ever thought he had the right to do less.

He also asked her for her blessing for what he would do from now on, to the best of his ability. It mattered to him to explain that it was her he was making that vow to, not to Albus Dumbledore, nor even to her boy, and that he considered himself accountable to no one but her.

And although there was no reply but the rustling of the branches and a pair of crows croaking gloomily in the distance, he could believe that he had been heard.

* * *

As the terms of capitulation demanded, he met Albus Dumbledore in the dungeons of the castle late that evening. The door to the Potions classroom, untouched for weeks, creaked when Severus pushed it open.

Without ceremony, he began. The doors of the ingredients cupboard sprang open as if of their own accord, and in no time, the materials he needed were selected, the scales were set up on the teacher's desk, and a fire was lit under a cauldron.

Dumbledore, who had walked inside with him this time, lit another fire in the grate against the winter chill, but then withdrew into a corner to watch in silence, a motionless shadow that blended with the shadows around him.

Severus worked without haste, but steadily and efficiently. Just like in Kyra's kitchen on Christmas morning, he measured, weighed, cut, ground, stirred and filtered with the precision of a machine and the ease of an artist. Barely twenty minutes later, the familiar silvery vapour began to rise from the simmering cauldron. It was time for the last ingredient to go in. Severus picked up the new phial of syrup of hellebore that he had found in the ingredients cupboard, uncorked it and let the two drops required by the recipe fall into the cauldron. The potion absorbed the syrup with a small hiss.

Dumbledore stepped out of the shadows by the fireplace. The Headmaster was smiling, a benign but knowing smile, and it was hateful to see how certain he had been of this outcome, how fully he had expected to be proved right.

Very deliberately, and never taking his eyes off the Headmaster's face, Severus picked the phial up again and tipped all the rest of its contents into the cauldron as well.

The smile disappeared.

Severus resumed stirring the potion as if nothing was wrong, then extinguished the flames and ladled the draught into a goblet. He placed it on the desk, stood back and crossed his arms. "It's ready."

"I said I wouldn't stop you."

The Headmaster's voice was quiet, but not as calm as he must have meant it to be. The faintest note of uncertainty had crept into it. Severus heard it with infinite satisfaction. He picked up the goblet, relished the one short moment in which he thought he saw Dumbledore tense, ready to intervene - and then, with one swift move, emptied its contents into the fire. A flash of blueish light illuminated the dark classroom. Hissing and spluttering, the flames consumed the mockery of the Draught of Peace.

"Well," Albus Dumbledore said wryly, "I won't thank you for trying to give an old man a fright, but if this is your choice, I'm glad of it."

"You're bold to call it a choice at all," Severus replied, replacing the empty goblet on the desk with a clang. "Do you think I don't know that you engineered this from start to finish?"

"You're no stranger to bold claims yourself, I see," the Headmaster said shrewdly. "What exactly are you suggesting I engineered?"

"Taking time out. Mulling things over. Finding my feet," Severus reminded him angrily.

Dumbledore pulled in a sharp breath. "Severus, I certainly did not ask the Aurors, to quote our excellent matron, to make a dog's dinner of your wand hand just so -"

"I wouldn't put it past you."

The Headmaster looked genuinely offended. "You flatter me, but even I can't foresee all the mishaps that may happen in the heat of battle."

"But eleven days, Dumbledore?"

"My fault, but not my intention. I asked the Aurors to leave you alone until I had testified on your behalf. Do you contest that I did it to protect you? You know what they're allowed to do when there's valuable information to be gathered from a potentially unwilling source."

"I know. I heard."

Azkaban was still mostly a blur, but one voice from a nearby cell, whimpering and pleading, stood out in his memory. Severus thought it had been Igor Karkaroff's, but the terror in it had rendered it barely human at all, so he couldn't be sure.

He shook off the cold that was creeping up on him and changed tack. "What about Kyra, then?"

"What about her?" Dumbledore replied calmly. "Are you alleging that your sister and I were in some sort of conspiracy? I assure you that I merely suggested a possible course of action to you both. If you and Kyra between you made a success of it, it was entirely your own achievement."

"You used her, Dumbledore." Severus' voice rose in accusation. "You played on her. You played on Kyra's desperate need to make peace with her past. What other reason did she have to burden herself with me and my trouble?"

The Headmaster heaved a sigh. "Oh well. I think we can attribute at least some of that to her kindheartedness and her generosity, too. She may not be quite as adept at nipping those impulses in the bud as you are, but you might want to consider respecting rather than resenting it in others."

There it was again, the twist of the knife that came out of nowhere. As always, it went straight under Severus' guard.

To his credit,Dumbledore did not make the most of it this time. "Ask her if she regrets any of it," he went on in a kinder voice. "If the answer is yes, I will hear your complaint, but if it is no, then just accept the gift. You are allowed to do that, you know. And now we had better get rid of this, too." Dumbledore took out his wand and Vanished the remainder of the poisoned Draught of Peace from the cauldron. His blue eyes twinkled in the firelight. "I dare say you were thinking of putting it in my morning tea."

* * *

**Albus **

As had been their custom for many years, Albus and his deputy headmistress had ascended the many steps to the top of the Astronomy Tower together to greet the New Year. There had been a spectacular display of fireworks from the residents of Hogsmeade to enjoy, and it was nearly half an hour past midnight when the last sparkler fizzled out and the castle grounds and the land beyond lay in darkness again.

Minerva McGonagall pulled her fur-lined cloak closer around herself against the cold. "Well, bless them," she said. "They've waited long enough to do that again with a truly light heart."

Albus nodded solemnly.

"Are you content, then?" Minerva asked after a moment, and Albus knew that she was no longer talking about the fireworks.

"I am," he confirmed. "Seeing how hard it is to audition convincingly for a role that you don't even want, I would say I am more than content. Let's not think badly of him for taking a while to come round."

"I'm surprised he got back in touch at all, to be honest. I thought we were well rid of him when he left, back in November."

"And was that your considered opinion, or a mere irrational hope?" Albus gave his deputy headmistress a somewhat reproachful look before continuing in a milder tone. "But I know you're not fond of him. I don't blame you. He's very good at generating that response in people."

"Nicely put. Am I to believe that six weeks in exile in the Muggle world will have made a difference there?"

"We can always hope. But in all honesty, Minerva - as long as those six weeks have made a difference where it really matters, I don't even care."

They were silent for a while.

"Where is he now?" Minerva asked at length.

"Downstairs. I believe he mentioned some unfinished business in the hospital wing that needed attending to." Albus glanced sideways at Minerva for her reaction, and she didn't disappoint.

"Well, that's... unexpected," she conceded slowly.

"I told you we can always hope." He smiled. "Once our students return, and all the usual mayhem of barely controlled magic fills these venerable halls again, I for one will rest much easier knowing that our matron and our Potions Master are back on speaking terms. They really should be, you know."

Minerva deliberated for a moment longer. Then she made a swift decision. "In that case, Albus, you must excuse me. I'll see if I can catch him before he leaves." Albus raised his eyebrows in polite enquiry. "You know there is a piano in my sitting room that has seen far too little use in these recent dark times. He had better bring that cello."

* * *

**Severus**

The air was mild, almost spring-like, carrying the clean smell of rainwashed earth, when Severus appeared on the top of a hill, half a mile or so from the castle.

A light breeze ruffled his hair and made his black cloak flutter while his eyes were fixed on the castle and the grounds below. He stood there for quite some time, immobile but for the wind tugging at his robes, the luggage he had brought forgotten on the ground beside him as he contemplated his old and new home. By now, it seemed that he was the only one who still found it strange to think of the place in such terms.

Kyra had laughed when he had finally worked up the – what was it, had it really taken _courage?_ \- to tell her that he was going back to his teaching job, this time for real. But again, she had laughed because she liked the idea, not because she found it ridiculous.

"Don't forget to give me the recipe for that Strengthening Solution," she had reminded him at the end of their last lesson together. "I can't ask you to come over for a pick-me-up every time I have a headache."

He had asked for pen and paper and started jotting down the list of ingredients and the required quantities when he realised that nobody except himself would be able to decipher what he was writing. He switched the pen to his right hand then and started over, this time in a much more readable script. The long hours in the reading room of St. Mungo's had truly paid off. With a quill or with a Muggle pen, he had a choice now – left for speed, right for legibility.

"Do you really write with both hands now?" Kyra asked as she looked on in awe.

He folded the paper up and handed it to her. "Still only with one at a time."

It was much the same with his wand. He had a choice there now, too, although he still favoured the left hand whenever it was a question of really subtle nuances. The return of that ability was definitely due to the cello. He had put in some extra work there after Christmas, to make sure Kyra would have something better to remember him by than worthless screeching. As a result, their last run through the cello suite left Kyra not breathless, of course, since she had no trouble keeping up with him whatsoever, but nearly speechless.

"Well, that was impressive," she said, falling back into her chair after the triumphant final chord.

"I hoped it would be, as it's the last time we've played this together."

"You're not coming back next week?"

"I can't. The new school term starts on Monday, so I have to be there."

That had been the moment of truth, but Kyra had shown no surprise, merely nodded.

"Of course. But you'll take the cello with you, won't you? I don't need it, I told you I don't play it any more." He had the impression that she was avoiding his eyes, maybe to hide her relief. She picked up the book with the cello suites from the music stand and held it out to him. "Take this as well."

He accepted it reluctantly. "I'm not sure if my duties will leave me enough time to keep up to standard."

"Just give it a try when you feel like it." She was definitely avoiding his eyes. "Oh, and tell me more about those duties of yours," she quickly changed the subject. "I've no idea, really – so what exactly do they encompass?"

He shrugged. "Trying to knock the rudiments of potionmaking into the heads of first years who don't even know the tip of their wand from its end, or which way up to put their cauldron on a fire… and as soon as they do know, I expect I'll be busy keeping them from plundering the ingredients cupboard for illicit mixtures… and if I don't manage that, I'll be doing overtime making the antidotes… but there may be a silver lining now and then, too, if I'm very lucky, in the form of a student who really understands what the subtle science and exact art of potionmaking is all about. One every ten years or so."

That was when Kyra had burst out laughing. "Oh dear. With expectations like that, I'd say you're guaranteed to be pleasantly surprised."

"I doubt it," he muttered.

"Let me hear how it goes, will you? And Severus, believe me -" she had added, serious again. "If you're only half as hard on your students as you are on yourself, it will be hard enough."

If she knew. Well, maybe she did. He was about to find out.

He slung the cello case over his shoulder, picked up his suitcase with the other hand, and set off down the hill towards the castle.

* * *

TBC


	18. Chapter 18

_June 25__th__, 1995_

**Kyra **

* * *

Kyra hummed softly to herself while she set the table in the kitchen for dinner. Four sets of everything, for Sarah, two of Sarah's friends from the lab where she was working on her PhD, and Kyra herself. It was a pleasant summer evening, the end of a fine but not too warm day. The back door into the garden stood open.

David was away playing at a recital, as Kyra had insisted that he do, brushing aside his concerns that his presence and assistance might be required at home. This had often been the case during the past months, but a little dinner party wasn't beyond her strength. An evening in the company of cheerful young people would make up for the effort.

Kyra turned to the stove to give the tomato soup another stir. As she lifted the lid from the pot, a stabbing pain shot through her from shoulder to hip on her right side. She winced, her eyes watering, and forced herself to take deep, slow breaths until the pain subsided. It didn't happen as often now as it had immediately after the surgery, but it still limited the use of her arm more than she found easy to accept. It distressed her less than she had expected how painfully thin she was these days, or that what little of her hair had grown back was wispy and grey. But she couldn't play, and she missed her music terribly.

Kyra picked up the wooden spoon with her left hand instead. A spicy scent rose from the pot as she gave the gently simmering soup a stir. It felt clumsy, but she was getting better at making do with the wrong hand. Her brother would have curled his lip at how slowly she was progressing, but she liked to think that he would at least have given her credit for her determination.

Her brother. He didn't know, of course.

Their correspondence had been fairly regular at first, when he had resumed his teaching job at Hogwarts thirteen years ago. He had written to tell her that he was settling in "more quickly than my self-respect demanded", which had made her shake her head in exasperation; and that he still occasionally played the cello, which she had not really expected. At one point early on, he had even asked her to send him some recommendations for duets for cello and piano that she thought he might be able to play "without disgracing myself too much in the eyes of a pianist who is almost as much of an amateur as I am, but considerably less willing to admit it", which had made her smile. She had put together a collection of suitable pieces, wondering who this mysterious fellow musician was that he had found in his own world. Thinking of herself and David, she hoped for the very best, but he never said.

As the years went by, however, his messages had become fewer and further in between. It was as if he could find nothing in his life worth relating to her any more. And then, around the tenth anniversary of their unexpected wintertime reunion, his letters had ceased altogether. Kyra refused to be disappointed. They had been fine keeping long silences even when they were in the same room together; it was even easier at a distance.

She did think of him. At the ten year mark, it had occurred to her that the boy her brother had dedicated his life to protecting must be old enough by now to attend Hogwarts himself, and that the two of them must finally have met. Unlikely though it was, she hoped they would be friends.

Especially lately, Severus had been on her mind a lot. Back when they had met regularly for their cello lessons, she had admired his resilience in the face of tragedy, but she had never really understood what it felt like to look into an abyss. She knew it now.

There was half an hour still to go before Sarah and her friends would turn up. Kyra made tea and then pulled up a chair to sit by the open back door with the mug in her hand, contemplating the beauty of the summer evening.

She did not need to worry about owl post any more. After the momentous Christmas that she and Severus had spent potionmaking and wrestling demons together, she had resolved to finally tell David about magic and her connection to it - if only to stop herself panicking whenever she saw a large bird gliding across their garden. But the need for such candour was gone again as soon as Severus had told her about the secret postal exchange between the magical world and the Muggle world. It was perfectly reliable if one wasn't in a particular hurry, and they had used it ever since. David had also been completely content to accept that starting a new job up in Scotland was reason enough for his brother-in-law's visits to their house to come to an abrupt end. In the end, it had been easier to just let sleeping dogs lie.

The very air in the room behind Kyra suddenly seemed to contract. She turned in her seat to see what was going on - and rose in a violent start. Hot tea sloshed out of her mug and over her fingers. With a cracking noise and in a swirl of black wizard's robes, her brother had Apparated straight into her kitchen.

"I apologise," Severus said in his deep, even voice, straightening up. "I realise this is tantamount to kicking your door down, but I'm afraid this is not the time to stand on ceremony."

He whipped out his wand, gave it a little twirl, pushed it into her unresisting hand and nodded at her smarting fingers. Kyra felt the wand vibrating slightly. A stream of air was emanating from it. When she directed it against the angry red skin, its coolness was wonderfully soothing.

"Thank you," she managed, still taken aback by his sudden appearance. At first glance, he had seemed unchanged, but that wasn't quite true. He was much better fed now, for one, and he had finally lost that stringy, angular look of his younger days. The robes he was wearing in place of the Muggle suit she had been used to seeing him in added a lot to that impression. Kyra had never thought of her brother as an imposing figure, but now he was. Still all in black, still as solemn as an owl.

"Sorry," Kyra said a little awkwardly. "But what - ?"

"He's back."

"Oh." It wasn't the cleverest thing to say, but she still felt rather dazed. She did know who 'he' must be, however; that much was as clear from Severus' grave tone as it was terrifying. The temperature in the room seemed to drop by several degrees.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. It was only a matter of time. We've seen it coming for years."

He walked across to the back door and closed it, then let down the blinds for good measure, too.

"Listen." His voice was low and urgent when he turned back to her. "I'm here to warn you. If anything out of the ordinary happens near you, or near David or Sarah - anything you can't explain, anything that has you worried - I want you to get in touch with Albus Dumbledore at once. He'll know what to do."

"But we're -"

"Muggles, I know. But neither your world nor mine will be safe from the storm that's coming."

He held out his hand for his wand, and Kyra returned it willingly. The burns had disappeared without trace, but somehow she no longer felt any better for it.

"As you know," Severus continued, "the Dark Lord considers people without magic expendable. And he also likes to exploit people's weak spots, in his enemies and allies alike. But you won't be primary targets as long as he remains unaware of your existence, and I intend to keep it that way. That means you won't see me again or hear from me again until it's all over. In the meantime, take no news for good news. I dare say Dumbledore is expecting to wake up any morning now to find that someone has dumped my dead body in front of his school gates, but I've asked him to let you know when it's happened, and to arrange for you to get your cello back."

For a short moment, Kyra rather pitifully hoped that he was joking. Then she realised that he had said 'when it's happened', not 'if it happens', and it broke her heart.

"You'll have to go back to him, won't you?" she asked. Her voice was trembling.

"I already have." His black eyes looked her up and down with a sudden strange intensity, as if he noticed only now how much she in her turn had changed. "And I doubt," he went on in a surprisingly gentle tone, "that my prognosis is any better than yours."

Kyra should have felt exposed and put-upon by that penetrating stare, but all she did feel was relief that he had just spared her having to put any of her own bad news into words.

"You're -" Her voice failed her. She was learning to accept that lightning could strike anyone out of a clear blue sky, but walking open-eyed into the midst of a raging thunderstorm was another thing entirely. "You're – a brave man, Severus. Incredibly brave."

He shook his head. "Be careful with that word, Kyra. I once, long ago, pulled up my sleeve and held out my arm and thought that was brave, too."

A sob broke out of her. Before she could stop herself, she had closed the distance between them, and they were in each other's arms. He held her, not with any particular tenderness, and certainly not with much experience, but solidly as a rock, the wide sleeves of his robes enwrapping her like a pair of black wings. And she held him, with all the strength she had left, so close that she could feel his heart defy fate with every strong beat.

"How long, do you think?" she asked in barely more than a whisper.

"I don't know," he replied quietly. "Months, years maybe."

"I'll hold on if you will. Don't let me down."

* * *

TBC - one more chapter.


	19. Chapter 19

**Epilogue - _May 1998_**

* * *

**Dav****id **

David McAllister walked down the stairs of his home to answer the doorbell.

He expected no visitors at this time. Sarah had been with him throughout the worst days, taking all the leave she could get from Porton Down. Everyone else had come and gone by now, too – extended family, his own friends and colleagues, Kyra's friends and colleagues, her entire orchestra, in fact, and last but not least Simon. He was Sir Simon now, of course, but even at the zenith of his meteoric career he had always found the time to enquire after them both, and he had refused to give Kyra's place in the orchestra to anyone else until the very end.

David was grateful to all of them for their words of comfort and their offers of support, but it became a little too much after a while. If solitude was to be his lot from now on, he felt he needed to start facing it at some point.

It was therefore with a mixture of curiosity and resignation that David opened the front door, expecting yet another kindly-meant attempt to cheer him up or take his mind off things when he didn't even want to feel cheerful or diverted.

But the young man who stood outside did not look like a threat to David's sobriety. He had very dark, rather messy hair, wore round glasses and was not very tall - almost a boy still, although the grave expression on his fine-boned face sat there far too naturally for his age.

There were other things wrong with the stranger's face, too. It was scratched and bruised around the eyes and across the bridge of his nose, as if he had had a run-in with a gang of thugs. For a moment, David thought in alarm that he was being asked for help in an emergency. But then he realised with some relief that the injuries were not fresh but healing already.

The cello case by the young man's side did not make his visit look random or accidental, either. David could tell, however, that in spite of neat black clothes that wouldn't have been out of place on a concert stage, this was no musician. The young man was holding the instrument close to his side, but the pose was too stiff and self-conscious for the cello to be an old friend. It was only then that David recognised the shabby case and knew whose old friend the instrument inside had really been.

"I've brought this," the stranger said a little awkwardly, indicating the cello. "We found a note inside the case that said to return it to this address once it was no longer needed."

"I'm afraid it is no longer needed here, either." David had not meant to sound harsh or unfriendly, but the request overwhelmed him. He had never even seen Kyra play it, but he knew that she had prized this old cello like a treasure, until she had passed it on to -

David looked up sharply into the young man's solemn face again, and a sense of foreboding crept up on him, strong enough to make him shiver.

The stranger stood his ground. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said politely. "But I still think it belongs in your world rather than in mine."

His choice of words was strange enough, but they made more sense to David than they had any right to. That lingering sense of mystery about Kyra's past, her extreme reluctance to talk even about innocent details of her early life, and her evident desire to keep her new family separate from her old one even once her brother had re-entered her life… David had never allowed himself to imagine any explanation beyond the obvious. He loved his wife and had not wanted to see her upset by unwelcome questions. But now it was as if this strange messenger was finally giving him permission to wonder whether he had ever even known Kyra well enough to love her like she truly deserved. He could already tell that it was no coincidence that his visitor, like a mirror image of David himself in recent days, had chosen to dress all in black.

"I know so little," David said helplessly.

"So do I, actually," the young man admitted with equal candour. His eyes were startlingly green, but they also seemed to contain the wisdom and the sadness of a hundred years.

Pulling the door wide open suddenly did not seem enough. David held out his arms, and the young man did not hesitate to step into the embrace. In their grief, they were brothers before they even knew each other's names.

THE END

* * *

**Bird's Eye**

_noun_

(1) [tech.] an elevated view of an object or area from above, facilitating orientation by giving a better overview than can be achieved from ground level.

(2) [mus.] a symbol used in musical notation, also known as a fermata, indicating that a note or a pause is to be prolonged beyond its normal duration at the discretion of the performer, disrupting the expected flow and rhythm of the music.

(3) [bot.] a distinctive, unusual pattern sometimes occurring within certain kinds of hardwood, forming tiny, swirling eyes that disrupt the smooth lines of grain. Origin unknown, with both genetic mutation and external influences such as climate and soil quality discussed in science. Impossible to discern from the outside without felling the tree and cutting it apart. Extremely valuable due to its rarity.

* * *

**Endnotes:**

I would like to express my greatest respect and admiration for the heroic women who are fighting Kyra's battle in real life. May all your stories end more happily than this one.

This story set a new standard of 'slow burn' for me. The first draft goes back to the year 2003 and was originally intended to counterbalance the shameless pro-Gryffindor bias of "The Summer of the Phoenix". The early outline stalled in 2005, when HBP came out and shot a lot of my preconceptions about Snape's family and personal history to pieces. Then I nearly burned the notebook containing the draft in total frustration in 2007, when DH gave us far more definite canon backstory than any Snapehead had ever bargained for. It didn't occur to me until earlier this year, when I dug the notebook back out of a drawer, that it's not healthy to hold a grudge forever. (I'm sure Kyra would agree.) It took the most ruthless revising I've ever done on a story, but here I am, 16 years later, finally reconciled with both this very old plot bunny and the final two books of the series.

I'm aware of the historical prejudices against left-handed people, and the traditional association of left-handedness with evil or untrustworthiness. I in no way endorse such ideas. The only reason why my Snape is originally a lefty is because playing the cello (an ordinary one at any rate, that wasn't constructed especially for lefties) makes bigger demands on the agility of your left hand than your right. I honestly wasn't aware until this story was three quarters written that there is a movie with a cello-playing Alan Rickman in it. I apologise for my completely unintentional lack of originality on that account.

Sincere thanks to RubraSaetaFictor (on AO3) for the language help and the lovely picture of the Hogwarts Inter-House Knitters Guild, and to my fellow Snapeheads Jaxon (on AO3) and Rachel Indeed (here on the site) for some extremely insightful character discussion.

I am also much indebted to the Harry Potter Lexicon, which IMHO is and remains the most reliable research tool for HP canon, and to Madasafish's excellent deep-dive essay about the likely location, layout, historical and social contexts of Spinner's End.

Last but not least, thank you to all reviewers for sharing your thoughts and reactions – it's the greatest joy for a writer to know that one's ideas resonate with others. I hope you've enjoyed the journey - I certainly have. :)


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